Richard Rodgers, Cyborg
by Shutterbug5269
Summary: "Richard Rodgers, astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man. Richard Rodgers will be that man. Better than he was before. Better...stronger...faster." Cover art courtesy of the lovely and talented Dtrekker
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

**May 18th 2012**

* * *

"_Lx4 to NASA-1"_

"_BCS arm switch is on_

"_OK Victor"_

"_Landing rocket arm switch is on."_

"_Here comes the throttle, circuit breakers in."_

"_We have separation."_

"_Inboard and outboard zero on. We're coming forward with the side-stick"_

"_Look's good"_

"_Rodger..."_

"_I've got a blowout in pamper 3!"_

"_Get your pitch to zero."_

"_Pitch is out! I can't hold altitude!"_

"_Correction alpha hold is off, threat selector is EMERGENCY!"_

"_Flight Com! I can't hold it! She's breaking up! She's breaking..."_

* * *

Richard Castle snapped awake with a start, for a moment not knowing where he was other than a less than comfortable chair. He looked down and noticed he had laid across five seats in that row with his jacket, and his mother's laid across him. He hadn't dreamed about the crash in a long time. Since Alexis was four, if he recalled, and she'd been lost in the mall in White Plains for an hour.

It was the closest he'd ever come to breaking the cover story that the CIA had given him fifteen years ago after he'd been made and couldn't do covert ops anymore. That was until this morning when Kate had been shot.

"_How do I tell her father that I _could_ have moved faster to save her but didn't?"_ he thought to himself.

What good was it that he could see things a mile away out of his right eye, run sixty miles an hour flat-out, bend steel with his right arm or leap 30 feet into the air if he couldn't use those abilities to save the woman he loved from being shot. All because somebody _might_ see him?

He had seen the man who'd fired the shot, but didn't know how to broach that topic with Ryan or Esposito without explaining the _six levels above _top-secret project that had made it possible for him to get a clear view of a man looking down a sniper scope fifteen hundred feet away. The NSA would sweep _everything_ under the rug and then whomever it was that had Beckett shot would get away with it.

He had only been partly joking with Kate when he'd once told her that he had a guy _everywhere_. He did. He had contacts around the world the NYPD couldn't even begin to touch. Five years of working covert ops and another decade of consulting work with the FBI, the CIA and the NSA after he'd been made had left him with a network of contacts that rivaled some small countries. If anybody could find the guy responsible and make him talk it was him.

In this time since he'd been outed as a former agent he'd only ever been away from Alexis for a few days to a week at a time after Meredith had delivered her to his door when she was three and left her in his arms with the paparazzi in tow. It's how he'd gotten made in the first place, but he wouldn't have had it any other way. Alexis had enriched his life in ways he couldn't possibly have imagined before. She had been a life in his hands that needed him for everything who also loved him unconditionally. He'd needed something honest in his life...something real after nearly a decade of secrets and lies.

He took a look down and noticed he'd been gripping one of the steel legs of the row of hospital seats in his sleep with his right arm and had bent it savagely. Rick looked back and forth to make sure nobody was looking and as quietly as he could, bent it back then thumbed the two bolts that had once secured said leg a little deeper into the floor.

It was a reminder of what he could do, and an unwelcome one at that. How could he take the time to fix a chair, but not use that same strength when it really counted? In his mind he had finally come to an understanding. He was not gonna hold back anymore, not when it came to the people he cared about.

Never again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

* * *

_Through the night...through the dawn,  
Behind you another runner is born.  
Don't look back, you've been there.  
Feel the mist as your breath hits the air.  
And it's underneath the moonlight, passing some;  
Still your heart beats in the moonlight like a drum._

And you will run your time, a shooting star across the sky.  
And you will surely cross the line, to pass on the flame.

Manfred Mann's Earth Band: "The Runner"

* * *

**Five Weeks Later  
1:45 AM**

Richard Castle ran, not realizing where he was going, nor how far. He just ran.

He hadn't spun himself up to his full speed of just over sixty MPH in over a decade. Nor had he meant to go running at all. His mother was out on a "date" and Alexis was staying over with Paige looking at college applications and he just could not bear to be in the empty loft anymore.

What had begun as a walk around the block to get some air had picked up to a jog and them before he'd known it he was running through the tunnel and out of Manhattan.

Kate had promised to call him in a few days...only she hadn't. A few days had stretched to a week...then to over a month. _"Of course she hasn't called...she has Doctor Motorcycle Boy...somebody completely human." _he thought to himself as he ran, _"What could a half-human freak like me possibly have to offer her. She has a bullet wound in her chest... because of me." _ He barely noticed where he was going as the miles sped by under the relentless pounding of his mechanical legs.

* * *

He remembered when Josh had stormed into the waiting room. He hadn't needed the man to tell him this was his fault, he was already in full agreement about that. Had even allowed Kate's erstwhile boyfriend to shove him backward into the waiting room wall, had seen the man's fist cock back and done nothing to defend himself. _"Good," _he'd remembered thinking, _"nobody else will do it...it's less than I deserve." _but when Alexis had stepped between them to intervene, the man had pushed her bodily aside to swing on him, knocking her off her feet. Once he saw his daughter go down, something in Rick had snapped.

"_Hit me if you want, if it'll make you feel better, but don't you _**ever**_ touch my daughter again, you son of a bitch!" _he'd growled, grabbing a fistful of Josh's shirt with his right hand.

Before he truly knew what was happening, he'd had Davidson lifted clear off his feet before pushing him bodily into the wall, his own left fist cocked back, ready to strike the suddenly wide-eyed doctor. Rick wasn't sure how far things might have escalated had Jim Beckett not intervened.

"_Stop it, all of you! Just stop it." _Kate's father had yelled, while helping Alexis to her feet and making sure she was unharmed before glaring at him and Josh.

"_I won't have you acting like three-year-olds while my daughter is fighting for her life!"_

Jim's admonishment had snapped him back to his senses and he'd lowered Josh gently back to his feet with a fierce glare at the doctor to make sure he'd made his point. The fear Rick had seen in Davidson's eyes had spoken volumes...and not in the way Rick had intended.

It had been a long time since he had felt so much like a freak.

* * *

The miles continued to roll by under the machine-like pace of his pounding feet yet still Rick ran...hoping he could outrun the pain he'd felt at Kate's rejection. Hoping he could outrun his own tortured memories.

It was dark, and the sensor in his left eye had long since automatically flipped it's view over into night vision mode when his running speed had left the normal human range at this light level. It had been one of the newer upgrades that had been added the summer that he had supposedly spent with Gina two years ago. Night vision tech had been made small enough to incorporate into his left eye's sensor package, and he was the natural test bed for the upgrade. Gina had come to pick him up at the 12th Precinct that afternoon not knowing, or caring, that pulling the "ex-wife card" was a bad idea.

Sometimes he honestly thought that Gina Cowell, his handler was less human than he was.

* * *

Rick had only known of two other agents who had ever been implanted with bionics to the extent that he had been. He had known their files nearly as well as he knew his own. He'd known them personally, too, having worked with them both. He'd tried so hard to help them, to spare them the worst of the emotional side effects of the transition. The things he'd had to go work out alone for the most part when he had been in their shoes.

Neither of their stories had ended well.

One had committed suicide shortly after he had recovered from the medical procedures and begun combat training. He'd walked right up to a high voltage box during a training exercise, torn off the cover and electrocuted himself right in front of him. What was left of the man's charred remains was barely enough for his family to bury. He couldn't say he blamed the man, he's wanted to kill himself too...at first. Rudy had helped him see he still had a purpose...something to live for. He wished he could have done the same for Jacob Marley.

The other was a female agent, Jamie Summers who had successfully completed training after her surgical procedures quickly and entered into a deep cover mission...some time during which she had gone insane. Nobody had been able to determine later whether she'd suffered from post traumatic stress from the mission that had left her a quadriplegic in the first place, if her transition to her bionics had not been nearly as smooth as anyone thought, or some terrible, unforeseen combination of the two.

After returning from her mission, she'd killed her handler, her therapist and two guards at the facility where she'd been recovering when she had made her escape and later threatened to kill Oscar Goldman, the Director of Special Projects. The natural result had been to call him out of retirement to bring Jamie in. He'd been the only man alive who'd had any chance of taking her on in close quarters.

The agent he was paired up with for that mission, Sofia Turner, had nearly been killed. She'd never known about his upgrades, (or Jamie's either, for that matter) only that he had been her training officer. Which was one of the few items in his file that _hadn't_ been heavily redacted, even at Sofia's clearance level within the CIA. The hope had been that Jamie would identify with him and he could talk her into coming back in.

In the end, Jamie had given him no other option than the use of lethal force. The fight between them had been titanic, they had wrecked a parking garage and then the lower two floors of an office building in Washington DC before they were done. In the end, they had done so much structural damage to both buildings that they'd had to be demolished. He was thankful that Jamie's death had been the only one he'd had to carry on his conscience because of his failure on that mission.

He'd had an on again, off again affair with Sofia Turner for over a year after that while she was on medical leave, which had ended shortly after she had gone back to active status. Mostly because of the secrets they'd had to keep from each other. He'd written her into the first Derek Storm novel shortly after that and that is how his time with the CIA had been officially written into the record.

* * *

By the time Rick had stopped running, he'd found himself standing in front of the house in the Hamptons in the early light of dawn. His cell phone had been on silent and he'd found fifteen missed calls, eight voice mail messages and about tenty five texts. Ten of the missed calls and three of the voice mail messages were from his mother and daughter and two voice mails each from Kevin Ryan and Javier Esposito, who had accounted for over half te texts as well.

"_Have I really been gone all night?" He thought to himself_

It was the last voice message...only ten minutes old...that truly caught his attention, mostly due to the identity of the sender.

Kate Beckett.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

* * *

_By the time Rick had stopped running, he'd found himself standing in front of the house in the Hamptons in the early light of dawn. His cell phone had been on silent and he'd found fifteen missed calls, eight voice mail messages and about twenty five texts. Ten of the missed calls and three of the voice mail messages were from his mother and daughter and two voice mails each from Kevin Ryan and Javier Esposito, who had accounted for over half the texts as well._

"_Have I really been gone all night?" He thought to himself_

_It was the last voice message...only ten minutes old...that truly caught his attention, mostly due to the identity of the sender._

_Kate Beckett._

* * *

**Beckett Family Cabin  
Adirondack State Park**

It had taken Kate most of the night to work up the nerve to bring up Castle's number on her phone. She had done it more than once in the last few weeks since she had sent Castle away. Every single time she had chickened out and stopped herself, feeling guilty for the lie she'd told. This time was different and she knew more was at stake, but she was still waffling.

Alexis had called her in a near panic two hours ago, the first few minutes of which were undecipherable word vomit which was how she was certain that the young redhead really was completely freaked out and not her dad trying to use the girl's phone to get an answer out of her.

Not that Kate even seriously considered the idea that Castle would _ever _so blatantly use his daughter that way. He loved her too much, and the girl was too respectful, too strong willed and too much her own woman to ever go along with her dad on such a stunt. She'd tell her father how stupid that was and talk him out of it should the idea were to ever enter his head, Kate was sure.

"_Not that I've given her much reason to respect me lately." _Kate thought to herself ruefully. _"If she knew what I'd done to him before I left, she'd never want speak to me again."_

Kate remembered what Alexis had told her, once she'd gotten the girl to breathe and speak in coherent sentences. The sheer terror in the girl's voice had made her wounded heart throb in her chest till she could hear the sound of it in her ears.

"_Paige and I had a stupid fight about Ashley and college so I came home early to have ice cream with dad...when...when I got there...the front door was ajar...the living room was a mess, I found an open, half empty bottle of Scotch on his desk and a glass broken on the floor next to the wall...dad is gone...I've called him a half dozen times and he hasn't answered...I've called detectives Ryan and Esposito even Dr. Parrish...but they can't seem to find him either...he never lets me go to voice mail...he's just...gone!"_

Kate, though her own fear and worry had begun to run away with her, had done her best to reassure the girl. She had told Alexis that she wasn't in the city, but she would do what she could to help. When she'd spoken to Espo, he had told her that Ryan was checking entry logs at the loft...Castle was clearly shown leaving the building after 8:30 PM They'd found security cam footage of him walking around the block and then nothing after 9:05 PM.

"_I don't know where Castle went, but 'Little Castle' and Mrs. R are really freaked out,"_ Ryan had said over speaker, _"it's like one moment he was there, and the next he just up and vanished right off all of the footage."_

Though Kate could neither see her nor sense her presence, a woman appeared behind her seemingly out of thin air. She watched Kate for a moment then began to shift out of phase again, but not before pressing Kate's thumb to the "send" button on her cell phone.

Though Gillian had taken herself out of phase and well outside of Kate's human range of hearing, she whispered into her ear, _"He is a good man and deserves better from you than this, human." _

When Rick's cell went to voice mail on the other end, it took a moment for Kate to gather her courage, but she too needed to know he was okay.

"Call Alexis and let her know you're okay, Castle," Kate said quietly into her phone, allowing a little anger to seep into her voice, "She came home and couldn't find you and she's scared out of her mind."

Before she could talk herself out of it, she added, "Call me back when you get this. I need to know that you're okay too."

* * *

When Castle listened to Kate's message he felt instantly guilty. He hadn't been thinking when he left the loft last night. He'd thrown his glass of scotch against the wall, grabbed his cell phone and was out the door, he'd only meant to go for a walk to clear his head.

He called Alexis as he let himself into the beach house and told her he was okay, then listened as she read him the riot act for scaring her like that. It took a half-dozen apologies and promises to take her out for ice cream when he got back before she would let him off the line. He was certain he'd hear it all again from both Alexis and his mother when he got back to the loft.

He sent texts out to both Ryan and Esposito to let them know they could call off the search parties, the boys were likely in enough trouble with Gates as it was after she had, to hear her say it, _"sent the dilettante writer playing cop" _packing two days ago.

"_Not cool, Castle." _had been the general consensus via text message from both of them.

He called the car service to pick him up in an hour, turned on the hot water heater and headed for the

master bathroom to take a shower. It wouldn't look good if he showed up at home smelling like he'd been running all night.

* * *

When he'd gotten out of the shower, he was mildly shocked (considering the girly shriek he made) when Gillian had appeared in the middle of his bathroom.

"_JESUS!..._Don't you guys _ever_ knock?" he managed to squeak out, grabbing a towel.

"Have you re-established contact with Katherine Beckett on your primitive communications device?" Gillian asked him without preamble.

Castle rolled his eyes, not realizing he was parroting Kate. _"No contact in nearly fifteen years," _he thought to himself, _ "and _this_ is what she appears out of nowhere to ask me about?_

"She's left me to stew for over five weeks, and only called because my daughter begged her to." Castle replied, irritated with the alien scientist's intervention in his personal life, "She can wait an hour or two."

"The one designated Katherine Beckett is injured, Richard, and she _does_ care for you." Gillian replied. She had promised Shalon that she would keep an eye on him, her mother had paid a heavy price to save his life.

"Kate has a funny way of showing it," Castle grumbled, "and I've told you to stop calling me Richard, it makes you sound like my mother."

"That is correct, Richard," Gillian replied, completely ignoring his complaint about her use of his full given name, it was an old argument Rick knew he would never win, "the one known as Katherine Beckett _should_ have treated you more fairly, but she is alone, and she is..._frightened_ is the right word, I believe. If I have come to judge your human vocabulary and emotions correctly."

"Isn't _Doctor Motorcycle Boy_ there to take care of her?" Castle asked sarcastically.

"If you are speaking of the human designated Doctor Joshua Davidson, no he is not. She had apparently dismissed him thirty rotations of your planet ago."

Castle did the math in his head. "That would be the day she left the hospital!" he exclaimed. "What about her father?" he asked next.

"According to Sasquatch," Gillian replied to his request, "the human designated James Beckett was last seen leaving their isolated structure by personal ground transport _seven_ rotations of your planet ago."

"Were you there when she was _shot_, too?" Rick asked.

"Richard Rodgers, you are fully aware that I am _forbidden_ to interfere in the socio/political affairs of your people. Our laws about inter-species interference are quite clear. That I have involved myself to this extent could have serious ramifications for me, and Shalon when we finally do go home as it stands."

"Then why _have_ you?" Castle replied.

"Among my people, much like yours, the familial bond is a strong one." Gillian replied, "It was Shalon's wish before I had her placed in TLC stasis that I maintain an..._interest_...in your welfare."

"So your _mother_ made you do it?" Castle asked, a wry grin on his face,

"I believe, Richard, that was what I just said." Gillian replied.

Right before she disappeared she stated, "Contact Katherine Beckett, Richard."

"Yes, mother." Castle said to empty air, knowing Gillian was long since gone.

* * *

_**Author's Note** RGoodfellow and I had an interesting conversation about what would most motivate Kate to call Rick so early and his apparent disappearance from the loft, combined with a scared out her mind Alexis did seem like the most likely scenario. Doesn't mean messing with RG isn't fun. Style points for anyone who recognizes the Six Million Dollar Man references. :-P_


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

* * *

_I told the starry sky to wait for you  
I told the wind to sigh like lovers do  
I even told the night you were true  
And you would be here soon  
And now I'm lying to the moon _

Matraca Berg: Lying To The Moon

* * *

_Previously_

"_Richard Rodgers, you are fully aware that I am forbidden to interfere in the socio/political affairs of your people. Our laws about inter-species interference are quite clear. That I have involved myself to this extent could have serious ramifications for me, and Shalon when we finally do go home as it stands."_

"_Then why have you?" Castle replied._

"_Among my people, much like yours, the familial bond is a strong one." Gillian replied, "It was Shalon's wish before I had her placed in TLC stasis that I maintain an...interest...in your welfare."_

"_So your mother made you do it?" Castle asked, a wry grin on his face, _

"_I believe, Richard, that was what I had just said." Gillian replied._

_Right before she disappeared she stated, "Contact Katherine Beckett, Richard." _

* * *

Beckett Family Cabin  
Just outside of Grieg, NY

Kate Beckett lay curled up on her floor doubled over in pain. It had been over two hours and yet Castle still hadn't called her back. She had long ago gotten text messages from Ryan and Espo that he'd called Alexis... even gotten a text from her that her father had checked in and had merely gone to the Hamptons on a lark and forgotten to lock the door and thanking her for her assistance.

"_Was this what it was like for him for the last six weeks? The not knowing?" _Kate thought to herself. She couldn't even really be angry at him for not calling. _"Unlike me, he'd given no promises to break...he doesn't even know I'm not with Josh anymore, even Lanie doesn't know."_

For the last two hours she'd waited near where her cell phone sat on the coffee table, her eyes dating to it as if she could will it to ring. All the while in her head flipping between telling herself she wasn't waiting by the phone for him to call her, hoping he would call, asking herself why he hadn't, fighting back tears and then feeling disgusted with herself for being so needy and weak.

She'd decided to try doing yoga to clear her head...her doctor had warned her not to...but she did it anyway. No sooner had she gone from downward facing dog to plank position, she was screaming in agony and balled up in a fetal position on her yoga mat. Pain was radiating from both scars like her torso had been set on fire.

Her pain meds made her nauseous and sleepy all the time, so she'd stopped taking them as soon as she'd pushed her dad out the door a week ago, accepting the minor discomfort she felt during that time as proof she could handle it with little more than Tylenol. She was curled in a ball on her yoga mat regretting that decision now. Yet still her eyes flicked back to her phone even through the red haze of pain and her own tears.

* * *

**A few minutes later**

Rick still hadn't called Kate back when the driver his car service had sent honked the horn. Whether it was because he was angry with her for leaving him hanging for over a month, with the agony of not knowing if she was alive or dead hanging over his head, or because he was miffed that Gillian had popped back into his life after fifteen years to once again meddle in his personal life, he truly didn't know. She'd warned him about Meredith too and he hadn't listened then either.

Gillian had always brought out the defiant, insolent teenage boy side of him with her smug sense of technological and cultural superiority. Even after he had helped defeat the renegades among their survey team who had poisoned her mother and left her hovering on the verge of a coma. She still saw him as a primitive from a backwater planet.

He owed Shalon his life for what she'd done, giving him her last dose of the medicine she'd needed to stay alive to get him back on his feet. She was in a suspension capsule the last time he'd seen her face - time for her reduced to a crawl to slow the progression of her radiation poisoning because she had put his life ahead of her own. The last words to him before Gillian closed the capsule "Y_ou have a destiny" _rang in his ears to this day.

Gillian, though she seemed to care for him in her own odd way, could be a bit more abrasive than her her mother...and creepy...she was definitely creepy. He'd thought that they had all gone home, or that had been his impression, but obviously some of their group had stayed behind to finish their mission...whatever that was.

"Guess I'd better do it before 'Nosy Nellie' gets on my case again." He thought to himself as he settled into the back seat of the town car while bringing up her number, the familiar image on his screen doing funny things to his insides. He was angry with her, yes, but he still loved her.

"Where to, Mr. Castle?" came the voice of his driver, Sergei Ivanov in his unmistakable Muscovite accent. Whenever he called the car service, day or night, the driver always seemed to be Sergei, or his daughter Ekaterina. Back in the old days, when he was more than just _Richard Castle Best selling author and Master of the Macabre _he would have found it suspicious. But Alexis loved riding with him, she and Ekaterina had become thick as thieves and she practically doted upon her daughter the violin prodigy.

"Back home, please, Sergei." Rick replied with a nod before Sergei slid the privacy screen back up.

He dialed Kate's phone but it went to voice mail. '_Typical' _he thought to himself. _'back to the silent treatment I guess.'_

Five minutes later, his phone rang, he didn't recognize the number, but he answered it anyway.

"Castle."

"Rick, it's Jim Beckett, Kate's father, we spoke once before, remember?" Jim's voice was plain as day.

"I stopped by the cabin, where she's recuperating to drop off groceries, and she was doubled over on the floor with pain, I think she's been skipping her pain meds since I've been gone."

_'Oh shit.' _Rick thought as his heart began pumping in his chest. He could feel the energy rippling in his bionic limbs - something that always happened when his adrenaline kicked in - making the joints where those three limbs connected to his organic body tingle.

"I think she was doing yoga or trying to..." Jim continued, his voice heavy with worry for Kate, "her doctor hadn't cleared her for that for another three weeks till after the stitches come out out. One of my fishing buddies up here is a doctor, I called him and he came by to check her stitches, she didn't pull any...thank god. He gave her something for the pain and she's sleeping it off now."

Castle breathed a little easier with the knowledge that her father had shown up to help her. Kate's stubborn streak was still intact, unsurprisingly. Anyone who told her not to do something she had her mind set on doing, Roy Montgomery included, could talk at her till they got blue in the face, Kate Beckett would ignore them or bulldoze over them and do it anyway.

"_Why Roy and her dad thought I would somehow get a different response from her, I'll never know." _he thought to himself as Jim Beckett continued his narrative.

"I saw the screen on her phone light up while Bill was reading her the institutional riot act for going AMA with the yoga, hopefully she'll listen this time. She'll be out for hours but I didn't want you to think she was ignoring your call. Seeing her crumpled on the floor whimpering like that scared me out of my mind,"

"Where are you guys?" Rick asked before he could stop himself.

He could hear Jim breathing on the other end of the line, mulling it over.

"I have a cabin up in the Adirondacks, we used to come up here a lot when Katie was little, but not so much since Jo died."

Rick wasn't sure if Jim was going to say much more than that, but Kate's father was blissfully unaware of the nature of his connections. He had held back until this point out of respect for the space she had asked him for, even after she'd remained silent long past the few days after which she had promised to call him.

Now that she had opened the door, he had no intention of staring at the ceiling in the loft and hoping she would call again. Thanks to Gillian, he knew that the last impediment she had placed between them, namely Doctor Motorcycle Boy, was gone as well.

He would find her, even if it was only so that they could have it out. He had spoken the truth in her apartment the night before Montgomery died. He had no idea what _they _were. But he was determined to find out. Even if they were nothing as far as she was concerned. He was no longer content to exist in limbo.

Her father had narrowed the search parameters for him without even knowing he'd done it. But first, he had to run the gauntlet that was Hurricane Martha and his angry daughter. He could run a cheetah to ground, see an owl from almost two miles away in the dark and crush a man's spine with his right hand, but nothing scared him nearly as much as his two favorite redheads when they were both angry and ganged up on him.

* * *

Kate woke up in the late afternoon, found her phone on it's charging stand and grabbed it, wincing when the stitches in her side tugged slightly. It had been on vibrate because she'd developed a strong distaste for loud noises.

When she unlocked it she saw Rick's missed call. He hadn't left a voice mail and hadn't called again since.

_'I'd practically begged him to call me, and when he had, I didn't answer'_ She thought bitterly to herself. _'My one chance to hear his voice, to make things right with him and I'd blown it to do yoga.'_

Kate curled herself into a ball around her cell phone and wept fat bitter tears thinking she'd blown her chance at a reconciliation with the man she loved more than life itself. She hadn't seen the note from her dad under her bed that had blown off the nightstand while she'd been sleeping as he cried herself to sleep thinking her life was over.

She had no idea that her father had called him back to explain her not picking up. She had even less of an idea that an hour later, her father had texted the address to the cabin to him or that Rick would be coming as soon as he sorted out his mess at home.

Nor had Kate seen the indistinct dark shape outside her bedroom window looking sadly in on her. The shape of Sasquatch, her unseen protector who had already torn a human (who'd been in a tree stand looking down a sniper scope at the cabin) limb from limb two nights before, leaving his various body parts deep in the woods to be scattered further by scavengers. Something he had carefully left out of his report to Dr. Gillian. He was not as simple-minded a creature as she thought.

The one called Richard Rodgers was his friend. Dr. Gillian had told him what the human woman named Kate Beckett meant to his friend when she had instructed him to protect her and her father from harm. Orders he would gladly carry out at all costs, to the death if necessary. Dr. Gillian did not believe he understood such abstract concepts as personal loyalty like Dr, Shalon had.

To Sasquatch, though, loyalty to the pack was not an abstract concept. To those he had come to care for, it was an absolute. It had been used against him to garner his cooperation once, which had lead to the near death of Dr. Shalon, to his deep shame. He served her cub as a penance for his misdeeds.

Anyone who sought to do his_ "pack" _harm (which he had now taken to include Kate Beckett and her father) would feel his wrath...and his fists.

_**Author's note** Some of you may have realized that I have strayed a bit off from TSMDM canon to include Gillian, Shalon and Sasquatch in this tale. You are absolutely right I have done exactly that. I hope you like the story anyway. And for the record...no...the man Sasquatch tore apart was _not_ Maddox...sorry to disappoint._


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

* * *

_When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears  
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears  
And I held your hand through all of these years  
But you still have all of me_

Evanescence: "My Immortal"

* * *

_Previously_

_Kate woke up in the late afternoon, found her phone on it's charging stand and grabbed it, wincing when the stitches in her side tugged slightly. It had been on vibrate because she'd developed a strong distaste for loud noises. __When she unlocked it she saw Rick's missed call. He hadn't left a voice mail and hadn't called again since._

__'I'd practically begged him to call me, and when he had, I didn't answer'___ She thought bitterly to herself. ___'My one chance to hear his voice, to make things right with him and I'd blown it to do yoga.'__

_Kate curled herself into a ball around her cell phone and wept fat bitter tears thinking she'd blown her chance at a reconciliation with the man she loved more than life itself. She hadn't seen the note from her dad under her bed that had blown off the nightstand while she'd been sleeping as he cried herself to sleep thinking her life was over._

_She had no idea that her father had called him back to explain her not picking up. She had even less of an idea that an hour later, her father had texted the address to the cabin to him or that Rick would be coming as soon as he sorted out his mess at home._

* * *

**Castle Loft **  
**12:30 PM**

Rick was in the middle of a very tense lunch with his mother and Alexis. Though they had taken his story about going for a drive to clear his head and ending up in the Hamptons, said story hadn't won him any points with either of them. Martha _had _been a little annoyed, but had taken it in stride when he'd reminded her about a few of her own escapades during his childhood.

Alexis, however, had been a different story. She'd hugged him fiercely when he'd walked in the door an hour before, but had been glowering at him ever since. She had let him know in no uncertain terms how scared she had been when she'd come home to find the living room in shambles, the front door ajar and him just...gone. He knew he was gonna be in the dog house for a while.

He almost thought his cell phone ringing halfway through "the lunch from hell" was a blessing in disguise. He retrieved the device from the breakfast bar to find that the number was blocked, which he thought was odd, but a lot of his fellow writers did it so he wasn't completely shocked.

"Hello?" He said, noncommittally.

"Mr. Castle, I'm a friend of Roy Montgomery's." the strange voice replied, "We need to talk about about Detective Beckett."

Rick visibly blanched, then excused himself from the kitchen, crossed the room and entered his office. He was gone for twenty minutes. When he came back, Alexis had disappeared. He beckoned his mother into the office and closed the door.

"Do you know who that was?" Martha asked without preamble.

"No," Rick replied, "Said he's a friend of Montgomery's. That Montgomery had sent him a series of files before he died that could ruin the careers of some very powerful people. Roy had kept them as leverage to keep his family safe. Apparently, Beckett's safety was part of the deal as well."

"But they tried to kill her anyway." Martha pointed out.

_'Thank you, Captain Obvious' _Rick thought to himself.

"Apparently," Rick replied, "this _'friend' _of Roy's didn't actually _receive_ said files until _after_ she was shot."

Martha sighed, with a sad withdrawn look on her face as Rick continued.

"He says he can guarantee her safety as long as she doesn't go near her mother's case, but if she starts digging, the deal is off and they _will_ kill her."

"And... this man, you believe him?" Martha asked.

"Not hardly, mother," Rick stated emphatically, "but right now I don't have much of a choice if I want Beckett to come out of this alive."

"You can't just keep this from her." Martha told him.

"If I tell her about this man," Rick said, "she'll insist on tracking him down and then jump right into the case again just like last time. In the physical and emotional state she's in now, she'll get herself killed. I can't let that happen. Not if I can prevent it."

Martha knew that look on her son's face, _'so like his father' _she thought absently_, 'of all the traits he could have gotten from him'_

"You are not going to stop her forever, Richard." she said in a heated stage whisper, "As soon as she gets back on her feet, she's going to want to start digging."

"Not if I can give these guys a reason to think twice...until then, I'll steer her away." Castle said.

"For how long?" Martha retorted.

"At least until I can find something to give her that can actually nail these guys without putting a target on her back." Rick said, "I almost lost her once. I'm not going to lose her again."

Rick walked out of his office, not seeing Alexis until she spoke up, startling him. He forgot how quiet his daughter could be.

"So I guess you're jumping right back into this with her again, aren't you?" Alexis whispered accusingly, trying and failing to disguise her hurt and anger. "The precinct too, I imagine?"

"How much did you hear?" He asked.

"Enough," Alexis replied coldly

"It's absolutely _imperative_ that you don't tell _anyone _what you just heard." Rick stated, trying to put enough command in his tone without pushing her too hard, "Especially not Detective Beckett. This is important, her life is hanging in the balance"

"You act like this is just about her," Alexis shot back to him, her fear and anger finally boiling over...fighting for dominance as she held back tears, "but you were standing right there next to her. You could have been shot! Hell, I could have been shot!"

Rick could tell she was on the verge of losing it and it tore his beating heart in two. He never wanted to hurt her...he'd given up his career as an agent, allowed Meredith to burn him to the press in order to be the father she deserved...accepted being a CIA lab rat once a month to not be pulled back to full active status. He'd wanted to be a better father for Alexis...the father he never got to have. The one his father had _chosen not to be._

Rick always new that one day his short, violent, secret past would one day catch up to him, but he couldn't bury his head in the sand anymore. He'd had the ability and the power to do save Kate from that sniper and had chosen not to, and he would never forgive himself for it. With great power comes great responsibility. If he walked away now and left Kate to die then what kind of man was he?

_'Not one neither Alexis...nor myself could respect' _a voice in the back of his mind replied bitterly. A voice sounding suspiciously like his father's. Unbeknownst to his mother, they had crossed paths a time or two when he'd been active.

"That's why I have to do this." He finally replied, "I put her in this position when I meddled in her mother's case that first time. I set her on this path as surely as if I'd shot her myself. I have to do _something_."

"Who's going to stop them, you?" She spat back, lashing out in pain and fear, "You need to grow up, Dad. You're a writer, not a cop. Stop pretending!"

Alexis voice broke on the last few words before she turned and bolted for the stairs leading to her room as she broke down. He could hear her sniffling and sobbing as she went and it tore his heart to pieces. He started for the stairs, but stopped when he heard her bedroom door slam closed. She very rarely shut him out so completely, but when she did, he knew better than to force the issue. She would sort herself out and give him a fairer hearing when she was ready.

Hopefully after he got back from the Beckett family cabin in a few days.

Rick turned and reentered his office, then walked into the closet, shutting the door behind him. He opened a small panel in the back wall and keyed in an access code then slid the index finger of his bionic hand into a slot.

Even if somebody knew his access code (Alexis' birthday) nobody fully organic would ever be able to unlock the panel. He'd had this small repository structurally reinforced so that even his bionics couldn't punch through the door. Not even Gina knew it existed.

The back wall of the closet slid back and to the side revealing a cache of small arms. One of the side benefits of his current status was a federal concealed carry permit. He'd rarely needed firearms with his bionic upgrades, but if things went bad while he was there, Kate might need something more than the few rounds in her Glock 26. He selected one of the smaller pistols, a Glock 19, checked the action, slid a loose round in the pipe, closed the slide and slapped home a magazine before slipping it into a holster along with two spare mags. They'd go in the glove box of his Mercedes.

Rick then took out a set of highly specialized tools, peeled back the artificial skin and opened the panel in his right palm. He double checked that the discharge nodes leading to his fingertips for the stunner were fully functional. He could set power discharge to either a non-lethal fifty thousand volts, or a higher setting that would permanently fry a human being's central nervous system leaving them dead in a matter of seconds.

Generally it would require a direct order from command to use it, but he'd long ago learned to bypass the lockout by disabling the governor chip in the power distribution node. Usually he left it alone as he'd rarely had call for even the stun setting, much less the lethal one.

One of the rare recent occasions he'd used the stun setting had been on Jerry Tyson last year when the man thought he'd had the upper hand. Tyson was currently "resting" in the secure medical supermax wing of Sing-Sing Correctional Facility with a permanent heart arrhythmia. Even fifty thousand volts could do permanent damage when repeatedly applied directly over the heart. He'd had it coming for what he'd done to Ryan and those women he'd murdered.

It had taken arranging a private meeting with the actress who played Lt. Chloë on a forgettably obscure sci-fi series called "Nebula 9" and the purchase of a working Thorian blaster to sweet talk that set of information out of Dr. Nicole Lewis's brain...but well worth it. Now he could switch between lethal and non-lethal settings at will with just a tap of his fingers to his palm.

If whomever this was wanted Kate dead, they would have to go through him and he was a _lot _more dangerous than anyone without a level six top secret clearance gave him credit for.

* * *

**4:30 PM  
The following day**

Kate Beckett lay in bed, feeling particularly sorry for herself. The popping of firecrackers across the lake the night before had done little to help her anxiety. She had gotten out of bed only when nature called and she had to change her bandages. She didn't see the point anymore. She'd finally found a valid reason to put her mother's case to rest...a reason to care whether she survived her decade's long obsession with her mother's murder and she'd screwed it all up.

Lying to him had been stupid. The most stupid thing she had ever done. She knew it had hurt him when she'd done it, but she hadn't realized just how much until Alexis' panicked phone call that he had disappeared.

She'd had her reasons for leaving the city...and for breaking her promise and not calling him. Most of them had felt reasonable and valid at the time, but after six weeks of reflection and a full night of panic that something terrible might have befallen him had made her re-think some of her reasoning.

_'I'd reacted out of fear and then run away, like I've always done' _she thought bitterly to herself, _'the one man outside the job that I could count on to always have my back, and I've hurt him almost as much as that bullet hurt me.'_

Kate heard the key turning in the lock on the front door and she stiffened at the unexpected sound. She checked the calendar on her phone. When she'd talked her dad into going home, he had relented, but only when she'd agreed to a weekly visit for Sunday dinner at the Pine Tree Inn in Brantingham.

Usually as a cop she had known better than to negotiate with a lawyer when she was in a bad bargaining position, but her dad knew how to push her buttons, he always had.

"Oh...god...it's Sunday," she groaned to herself, trying to come up with an excuse to get her father to go away, but coming up empty, "I can't handle this now."

She heard him walk through the house, he wasn't nearly as quiet as he thought he was. She practically winced when her bedroom door swung open.

"DAD!" she shouted at him, thankful she had at least thrown on a sleep shirt after changing her bandages before going back to bed "A little privacy!"

"Katie, you haven't called me since you almost pulled out your stitches with that silly stunt the other day, and you think I'm worried about your modesty?" Her father retorted.

Kate knew he had her dead to rights, she'd promised her dad she'd call him too. She should have known that unlike Castle, her dad would not respect her privacy, he never had when she was a teenager.

"Have you gotten out of bed at all, or done any of your _doctor approved _exercises?" he asked, making note of the _"doctor approved" _part in particular. "If you want to get your life back you can't spend all of your recovery time moping. What would your friends say if they saw you like this? Or Rick for that matter?"

Kate stared down at her lap, feeling tears well up in her eyes at the mention of Castle.

"What difference does it make?" she whispered, "I've...I've ruined _everything_ with him."

"Oh Katie-bug...no...of course you haven't," her father whispered, sitting down next to her on the bed and drawing her into his arms as she finally broke, the tears she'd been trying to hold back rolling down her cheeks.

"y-yes...'_sniff'..._yes I have...daddy..." she sobbed into his chest, hating herself the whole time for her weakness, "Rick...he told me he loved me...after I was shot...he tried to save me..."

Kate sobbed uncontrollably for a few moments as Jim stroked his daughter's hair. They had never been much of a touchy feely type of family, but he knew she needed to get this out. It had been what she'd been torturing herself with for the last month when she thought he couldn't see.

"I lied to him..._sniff..._told him I didn't remember...but I do...sent him away and told him I'd call...but I didn't...I ran away...and left him to suffer...I was worried he was dead...and the last things I said to him...were all lies. I...begged him to call me...and when he did I didn't answer. I ruined everything!"

Kate broke down again into another fit of sobbing, leaving her father shocked.

"Katie...didn't you read my note?" when Kate looked up at him with tears in her eyes and an expression on her face like her whole world was crashing down around her, it dawned on him that she hadn't.

"Oh...Katie-bug...I'm so sorry" Jim whispered into her hair as he drew her back into his embrace, trying desperately to soothe his baby girl's broken heart "you were sleeping when I left... I should have waited...told you in person...or texted you instead of writing that damn note."

"Told me what, daddy?" she sniffled into his chest

"After we got you back in bed, I picked up your cell phone and put it in the charger, when it lit up and I saw the missed phone call...I wrote down Rick's number and called him back for you...told him why you couldn't call him. I invited him to dinner with us and sent him directions to the cabin. He'll be here in a couple of hours Katie..you need to clean yourself up and get dressed"

Kate was shocked. Normally she would have been indignant that her father had meddled in her personal life, but right at this moment she could not contain her relief and gratitude that her father had gone to bat for her when she'd needed it the most.

She was still sniffing...still teary eyed when her head perked up and hugged her father earnestly for the first time. She knew she still had a lot of fence mending to do where her partner was concerned, but her father had braved her wrath to give her this chance. She wasn't sure how many she would get to make things right.

She knew in her heart she could not afford to waste it.

* * *

_****Author's note** Didn't think RG would let me get away without posting another chapter...don't want him to drive himself to distraction because my muse is a crazy person...enjoy.**_


	6. Recollections

**Chapter Six  
Recollections  
**

* * *

_So hold me when I'm here, right me when I'm wrong  
Hold me when I'm scared, and love me when I'm gone  
Everything I am and everything in me  
Wants to be the one you wanted me to be  
_

_I'll never let you down, even if I could,  
I'd give up everything, if only for your good  
So hold me when I'm here, right me when I'm wrong  
You can hold me when I'm scared, you won't always be there  
So love me when I'm gone _

* * *

_Previously_

_"After we got you back in bed, I picked up your cell phone and put it in the charger, when it lit up and I saw the missed phone call...I wrote down Rick's number and called him back for you...told him why you couldn't call him. I invited him to dinner with us and sent him directions to the cabin. He'll be here in a couple of hours Katie..you need to clean yourself up and get dressed"_

_Kate was shocked. Normally she would have been indignant that her father had meddled in her personal life, but right at this moment she could not contain her relief and gratitude that her father had gone to bat for her when she'd needed it the most._

_She was still sniffing...still teary eyed when her head perked up and hugged her father earnestly for the first time. She knew she still had a lot of fence mending to do where her partner was concerned, but her father had braved her wrath to give her this chance. She wasn't sure how many she would get to make things right._

_She knew in her heart she could not afford to waste it._

* * *

"Richard dear, wear this one."

Martha handed him a cobalt blue button-down shirt that set off his eyes. She had noticed more than once the way Kate had looked at him when he wore it, despite the fact that the detective had always gone to great pains to try to hide it. A mother simply notices these things. "Wear it with the dark blazer and don't worry about a tie, it's a four-hour drive, and this restaurant isn't exactly _Le Cirque_, you know."

"I'm having dinner with Kate and her father, I want to make a good impression." Rick replied.

"You tried get between his daughter and a bullet, kiddo," Martha told him consolingly, "I don't think you could ever hope to make a better impression on him."

_"You didn't try hard enough" _a small mocking voice in the back of Rick's mind said. One sounding suspiciously like Jackson Hunt. He had not counted upon how perceptive his mother was, however. She had seen the dark cloud chase across his face at the mention of Kate's shooting.

"She's recovering, Richard... she'll be back on her feet in no time at all."

"I could have moved faster," Rick whispered bitterly, slapping his right hand on this thigh, his whole being betraying his sense of guilt "I...should have moved sooner...I could have..."

"Oh, Richard!" Martha said soothingly, taking his face in both of her hands to make him look her in the eye, "My dear boy, you can't think about it like that. What's done is done, and she wants you in her life. When she thought you were missing, the _only_ thing she thought of was getting help to try to find you! You just be your usual charming self, _the man I raised you to be_, that's all she needs."

Martha waved a hand indicating his arm and legs, "These may be very lifelike, but they are _still _prosthetics. That you got to her _at all_ and managed to get her out of the line of fire was _nothing_ short of amazing."

Rick forgot sometimes what his mother had been told by the doctors about his bionic limbs, the story she'd bought hook, line and sinker in her joy at the very _possibility _of him walking again after the test flight accident had taken his right arm, both legs and his right eye.

* * *

The only reliable memory he had... after impact -_the one burned in his mind forever_\- was when he'd awakened briefly in intensive care: his mother in tears, taking in his broken body... the dips in the sheets where his right arm and both of his legs should have been, the bandage over his ruined right eye, and the determination he'd seen through those tears telling him she would indeed drop _everything_ to care for him even if he'd been reduced to a bedridden, wheelchair-bound invalid for the rest of his life.

Rudy had later told him she'd been on the first direct flight she could get after the accident, that she'd left his bedside only for calls of nature from the moment she'd arrived. She had either charmed, browbeaten or otherwise twisted to her will any doctor, nurse, or hospital administrator who made even the most feeble attempt to dislodge her. A true force of nature, a red-haired angry, feral mother bear. To this day, Rudy still called her _"__Hurricane Martha". _The name had stuck with her ever since.

Unbeknownst to Martha Rodgers, however, it had been his father who'd gotten him into the bionics program. Jackson Hunt and Oscar Goldman had come up together in _"the Company." _It had been Oscar who'd later told him that, in spite of everything, Hunt had never stopped loving his mother. His father had watched her quietly break down outside of his room after she'd first seen what the accident had done to their son, and could not bear to see her in such obvious distress.

The rest was history.

Most of his early assignments had been disguised as testing the range of his new limbs. Each time he would come home to a feast she had prepared and as many of his NASA buddies as she could get in touch with. She had even gotten Buzz Aldrin to put in an appearance once, (Buzz was as much a fan of his mother's stage work as he had been Rick's inspiration to join NASA)

When that was no longer a practical alibi, _Richard Castle_ had been born. Before Alexis came along, he had gone on frequent _"writing trips" _for _"inspiration" _for his novels, most of which he had even written himself, having actually rediscovered a flair for and a love of writing he'd forgotten about from his childhood.

It had taken Rick a long time and no small amount of soul-searching to come to terms with what his father had done... abandoning them before he was born. Eventually he had come to understand that Richard Webb (he was one of the few people with the security clearance to know his real name) couldn't simply _walk away_ from the job - he'd made far too many enemies, both outside the CIA _and_ within its ranks - the kind of enemies that he could only keep away from his family by not being in their lives. But the moment Rick had looked into the eyes of his daughter on the day she was born, he knew he couldn't do that, couldn't be that man.

* * *

Meredith simply had never had it in her to be the parent his own mother had been. It just wasn't in her nature. Alexis deserved better than that, she deserved more. He was secretly glad his mother and daughter didn't know about his other life. He had caused his mother enough heartbreak and he couldn't bear to be the cause of more. So he played the role he always had with his mother when it came to things she was better off not knowing.

"Of course mother, I'll try." He said, giving her a wan smile.

"That's all anyone can ask, kiddo." Martha replied. A phrase she'd used often in the early days of his physical therapy, after the new limbs had been surgically grafted to him, hadn't been rejected and he'd needed to learn how to walk and perform physical tasks with his right arm all over again. His mother had been at his side the whole time...at least until the more... _secret_... functions had to be tested. It hadn't been easy to convince her to let him do those alone. He'd had to play the _"cult of manhood" _card.

As much as he'd hated concealing that from her, he'd sworn an oath when he'd joined the Air Force. He'd given his word, and been granted a high level security clearance - one he still had – and that came with a very large obligation. No matter how badly he might want to tell people that aliens _were real_ and that one was quietly guarding the love of his life and her father.

* * *

**Four Hours Later**

Rick had pulled off of State Route 12 and had turned onto the private drive to get to the Beckett family cabin, when he pulled to the side of the road, turned off the engine and the lights and got out of the car. He stepped just out of sight of the road and whispered,

"Sasquatch? You there, old friend?"

Unlike Gillian, Sasquatch had better manners. He made sure Rick knew he was there, instead of popping into phase right behind him. His vocal cords may only be able to form the most rudimentary of words in English, but Rick knew that there was a powerfully complex, intelligent mind at work behind those expressive eyes of his. Fifteen years ago, he had learned American sign language in a little under two hours, using only a child's picture book.

Sasquatch hugged him, he hadn't seen his friend in such a long time. It was good to see him again, even in these dire circumstances.

Rick scratched his chest the way he liked, in the many earth years he had served Gillian, she had never picked up on this like Shalon and Rick had. He would be glad when he could see her again, too.

"Hey, old buddy, anything happen since you took up guard duty?" Rick asked him.

"_There was one," _Sasquatch signed, _ "he had one of your long sticks. He will not be bothering her again."_

"Show me." Rick whispered.

Sasquatch phased out, then returned a moment later with the bent remains of an M-40 sniper rifle, the barrel twisted roughly upward back toward the stock. The stock and bold assembly were covered in dried blood.

"_He will not be found."_ Sasquatch signed, if he felt any remorse for killing the man, Rick could see no sign of it. "_The forest took care of what was left."_

"You did the right thing, old buddy." Rick knew the last thing Kate needed to be confronted with at this stage of her recovery was another sniper. He had an epiphany and got put his cell phone, he had long ago downloaded the image from his right eye onto it.

"Was this the man you killed?" Rick asked, showing him a photo of a man he now knew to be Cole Maddox.

"_No" _Sasquatch signed back, _"Different human."_

"If you see this man, if he comes here, _disable_ him but keep him alive and find me if you can. I have questions for him. If it looks like he might escape, or if he puts Kate in danger though, _kill him_."

"_Understood." _Sasquatch signed, his eyes darkening with intent. Rick was protecting his pack, this was something he understood well. He had seen Rick's cub with his own eyes. She was pretty and quick but she was also kind. He had raised her well. Sasquatch hoped one day to be returned to his own pack like Shalon had promised him. Until then, he would protect the pack he had adopted here.

Rick showed Sasquatch a few more images, two men and a dark-skinned woman he assured him were safe. They were part of Kate's pack, people she trusted. Any others were to be watched carefully, driven off if they posed a danger. Killed if they were actively hostile. Things Gillian would not appreciate if she found out, but some duties were greater than his obligation to Shalon's oldest cub.

When Rick finally went back to his car, Sasquatch melted back into the forest, the only place on this alien world he actually felt at ease.

* * *

_****Author's note** I was going to go a bit longer with this, include the dinner with Kate and her dad at the Pine Tree Inn, but I had just found out that RGoodfellow was going on a trip and I wanted him to get this before he left. This seemed like a good place to stop. It was getting rather maudlin and I want the dinner to be more upbeat and less like "Fall From Grace."**_

_**Mark**_


	7. Dinner in the Adirondacks

**Chapter Seven  
Dinner in the Adirondacks**

* * *

So close no matter how far  
Couldn't be much more from the heart  
Forever trusting who we are  
And nothing else matters

Never opened myself this way  
Life is ours, we live it our way  
All these words I don't just say  
And nothing else matters

Trust I seek and I find in you  
Every day for us something new  
Open mind for a different view  
And nothing else matters

Metallica, "Nothing Else Matters"

* * *

_Previously_

_"If you see this man, if he comes here, disable him but keep him alive and find me if you can. I have questions for him. If it looks like he might escape, or if he puts Kate in danger though, kill him."_

_"Understood." Sasquatch signed, his eyes darkening with intent. Rick was protecting his pack, this was something he understood well. He had seen Rick's cub with his own eyes. She was pretty and quick but she was also kind. He had raised her well. Sasquatch hoped one day to be returned to his own pack like Shalon had promised him. Until then, he would protect the pack he had adopted here._

_Rick showed Sasquatch a few more images, two men and a dark-skinned woman he assured him were safe. They were part of Kate's pack, people she trusted. Any others were to be watched carefully, driven off if they posed a danger. Killed if they were actively hostile. Things Gillian would not appreciate if she found out, but some duties were greater than his obligation to Shalon's oldest cub._

_When Rick finally went back to his car, Sasquatch melted back into the forest, the only place on this alien world he actually felt at ease._

* * *

Though it had been good to catch up with Sasquatch, especially in reference to Kate's security arrangements, it was finally time to beard the lion in its den. He took a deep breath before getting out of his car, carrying the bouquet of flowers he had bought from a seasonal roadside vendor just outside Lyons Falls.

The front door opened on the second knock to reveal Jim Beckett, who opened the door wide to admit him. He smiled broadly and shook Rick's hand vigorously. Though they had met only twice before, and not under the best of circumstances, the man seemed genuinely glad to see him, which made him feel even more guilty.

"Hurry up, Katie-bug, Rick's here!" Jim hollered up the stairs, before turning back to their guest. "Katie will be down soon, she's just indulging a woman's prerogative to take her time getting ready."

"That nervous is she?" Rick asked, a little nervous himself, at Jim's nod to the affirmative, he rambled on. "She and I didn't exactly leave things on a good note, Jim." Rick finally said, if she isn't ready for this...to go out...or for me to be here... "

"Rick," Jim said, resting a hand on his shoulder, "what came between you is as much my fault as yours or hers, son. I asked you to do something that was not your responsibility, but her father's... mine. Something I was afraid to do myself. She froze you out because of it when she needed your support the most. If Roy hadn't called you, she would likely have died with him in that hangar. You saved her life twice in the span of a week."

"Once." Rick said softly, "I didn't get there soon enough the second time."

"You did more than anyone else could have son, don't ever doubt that." Jim told him, "I don't know what you told her there in the grass, Katie still won't talk about it, not even to her therapist, but whatever it was made her hold on 'til help arrived. Made her fight to live. That means a lot in my book."

_"She's seeing a therapist?"_ Rick thought to himself, but let the thought go as Kate's father continued, unabated.

"She won't talk about this directly either, Rick," Jim whispered, a hushed concern creeping into her voice, "but I'm sure part of the reason she insisted on coming up here was that she's afraid her shooter will try again."

From what Sasquatch had told him not long ago, he knew that Kate's fear had been right on the money. Rick was absolutely certain that when the man his alien friend had killed failed to report in, another would be sent. Perhaps Maddox... perhaps somebody else. Either way, Sasquatch would be on them like white on rice. Which meant he might actually get some answers as to whom he was facing. The maxim from Sun Tsu came to mind.

'_If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.'_

Whomever this unknown mystery figure was, they obviously had no idea who they were dealing with. Even if they knew he had once been in the Air Force and then a NASA test pilot twenty years ago, the rest was black - redacted and buried so deep that even the last three presidents had never known about it – this _"Dragon"_ would be getting an education soon enough. The next hired gun they sent after Kate would tell him what he wanted to know, or he would end up like the last one. If nothing else, eventually whomever this was would either run out of mercenaries, run out money, or get impatient and make a mistake. The longer he kept Kate alive, better her odds would be.

If they made the mistake of going after his family, _Hunt _would get involved. Even Rick shuddered at the thought of the violence his estranged father was capable of.

"Jim," Rick whispered back, "I have made some private arrangements for Kate's safety. Somebody I trust implicitly...even with Alexis."

"Katie won't like that." Jim replied, but his eyes spoke volumes of his approval. Kate's safety was more important to him than her wounded pride.

"Neither you nor Kate will ever see him, or hear from him, don't trust anybody who tries." Rick explained, "He will never come to the door or call you, or announce himself in any way. But he _will_ be here. I've seen to it that he knows who is safe and who isn't. But he will be watching."

Rick debated telling him about the recent attempt that Sasquatch had taken care of, but he figured that there were some things Kate's father was better off not knowing. If any threat came up that a seven-foot-tall fully bionic behemoth who could speed up or slow down time, pass in and out of material phase at will and tear a man to pieces with his bare hands couldn't stop, there was very little a semi-retired corporate lawyer and recovering alcoholic in his mid-sixties would be able to do about it.

Jim would only stay...and hover... just like he would do if it was Alexis or his mother in danger. He knew that Kate wouldn't want her father in harm's way if the shit hit the fan, so he kept that information to himself. He implicitly trusted that Sasquatch had this handled, whomever had hired Maddox, (or the guy who's remains were now spread out over half the Adirondack State Park for that matter) really had no idea what they were messing with.

"Thank you, Rick." Jim told him, visibly relaxing for the first time, "You have no idea how much better that makes me feel about leaving Katie all alone up here."

"Trust me, Jim, over the past three years, I've learned that sometimes you have to do an end run around Kate's stubborn streak... I don't want her to end up like Roy."

"Neither do I," Jim replied solemnly before they heard footsteps causing them to turn almost in unison to see Kate round the corner at the top of the staircase.

Rick's focus was drawn entirely to Kate, a lavender sundress draped over her slender form, artfully flowing along her curves the soft material ending just above her knees as she navigated the stairs in a pair of matching wedge heels that were drastically lower than the four-inch ones she typically favored, bringing the top of her head just above his chin when she reached the bottom of the stairs.

He was captivated.

Kate looked so much better than she had the last time he had seen her, though the very slight shuffle in her walk and the haunted look in her eyes gave mute testimony to how much further she had yet to go to be fully herself again. She smiled brightly to see him, in spite of herself, but the first thing she did when she got within arm's reach was grab his right ear and give it a sharp twist.

"Oww!" Castle whined, wondering what it was about his ears that they generally seemed to be her first target when she was irked at him.

"_That_ was for scaring the crap out of Alexis the other day," she said in her interrogation room voice before rising up on her toes and wrapping her arms around him in a very light hug followed by a brief brush of her lips to his cheek, "and this is because I'm so glad that you're okay..." she whispered, "when I thought... something might have happened to you...I..."

Kate's voice was shaky as she trailed off, her eyes watery, holding back tears by force of will alone. Rick could tell she was struggling to keep her emotions in check, and could think of nothing to say that might put her at ease without making light of her feelings. In the end it was her father who had come to her rescue.

"How about we get going, shall we?" Jim said, breaking the uncomfortable silence, "We'll want to get there while there's still a decent table. We can take my Explorer.

* * *

Dinner at the Pine Tree Inn was everything Rick could have hoped for, from the log cabin facade of the exterior to the rustic Adirondack decor of the interior - complete with a real moose head over the bar - the place held his writer's fascination. He knew the place would more than likely find its way into one of his Nikki Heat books.

The portions were on the large side, and quite filling. He was more than surprised that Kate managed to put away most of her dinner of a burger and fries. Rick had ordered the honey glazed wings and they were to die for. Jim, to his credit, had kept the conversation light. He had been subtle in his manipulation, having maneuvered the two of them into sitting next to each other.

Jim Beckett felt a certain amount of guilt for pushing Rick to confront Kate after this Lockwood fellow had escaped from custody. He should have known how she would react, that she wouldn't dig her four-inch heels in and freeze Rick out like she had done more than once growing up. _'So much like her mother' _he thought to himself.

Though he usually stayed firmly out of her love life in the last few years, _especially _after that whole Sorenson fiasco, this time he felt the need to do... something... to set right what he had made a mess of when he had pressured Rick to do what _he _had been afraid to.

He had always seen the feelings Kate had for Rick, they practically poured out of her each time she spoke of him and his shenanigans... even when she had dated the doctor that was never really around for her when she needed him. Or the detective that had actively tried to replace him in her heart and compete for her attention.

Neither of them had really ever stood a chance.

He dimly remembered those first few months after he'd gotten out of rehab. He'd had to have someone stay with him who didn't drink and of course Kate had volunteered, he'd seen that tiny one room box of an efficiency apartment she could afford on a patrol officer's salary and was immediately okay with that. He'd recognized Johanna's collection of mystery novels when he'd helped her pack...only the Richard Castle novels had seemed to have multiplied and lacked the thin layer of dust the others had accumulated.

Katie needed that man who was now sitting next to her in the booth, so much so that he knew it scared her, so she'd run the other way... to somebody she felt nearly nothing for. Which, if he examined it closely, was no more fair to Josh Davidson than it had been to Richard Castle or herself.

He'd had a hand in pulling them apart before the summer, and now Jim Beckett felt he owed it to his daughter, and to Jo's memory to give her the little push (or the not-so-little push knowing Jo) in the right direction he knew she'd have given her if his position and Johanna's had been reversed.

"So, Rick, what are your plans for the next week?" Jim asked, unable to help the lawyer in him.

"Well, with Alexis giving me the silent treatment, I figure a tactical retreat is in order...give her some space at least until she cools off a little. She'll let me know when she's ready to hear me out, she always has."

"So, heading to the Hamptons for a few days?" Kate asked, but from the way she deflated next to him, he could tell it was more of a rhetorical question to her.

Jim's eyes bounced back and forth expectantly between the two of them, his expression to Rick saying _"fix this" _as he watched his daughter's face fall and her walls began to slowly go up.

"Well... to be honest," Rick replied, answering Jim's silent plea, and drawing Kate's attention back up from the napkin she was slowly twisting in her lap, "I was thinking of getting a hotel up here, it seems pretty peaceful."

Kate perked up a little at that, though she would never have voiced it aloud, she had been miserable since she had arrived in the cabin. Memories of herself and her mother haunted the place almost as much as her guilt about lying to Rick about his declaration of love for her and breaking her promise to call him. Only her pride would not allow her to beg him to stay now.

"Nonsense," Jim insisted, "I'm heading home as soon as I drop you two off from dinner, you are perfectly welcome to stay at the cabin, you can use my room, I replaced the bed with a single years ago and it's comfortable enough."

Kate opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again... unable to get any words to fall out...totally flabbergasted that her father would be the one to invite Rick to stay. Obviously some understanding had to have been reached between them when she had been in a coma the night of her shooting.

At least Rick wasn't walking away from her, wasn't pulling away like she'd feared when he hadn't returned her call right away. Perhaps there was time for her to fix what she had broken in that hospital room.

She hoped it wasn't too late.


	8. Encounter At The Cabin

**Chapter Eight  
Encounter At The Cabin**

* * *

_Hush little baby, don't say a word  
And never mind that noise you heard  
It's just the beast under your bed,  
In your closet, in your head_

Exit light, enter night  
Grain of sand  
Exit light, enter night  
Take my hand

_We're off to never never land  
_

Metallica: "Enter Sandman"

* * *

_Previously_

_"Nonsense," Jim insisted, "I'm heading home as soon as I drop you two off from dinner, you are perfectly welcome to stay at the cabin, you can use my room, I replaced the bed with a single years ago and it's comfortable enough."  
_

_Kate opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again... unable to get any words to fall out...totally flabbergasted that her father would be the one to invite Rick to stay. Obviously some understanding had to have been reached between them when she had been in a coma the night of her shooting._

_At least Rick wasn't walking away from her, wasn't pulling away like she'd feared when he hadn't returned her call right away. Perhaps there was time for her to fix what she had broken in that hospital room._

_She hoped it wasn't too late._

* * *

After Jim Beckett had climbed into his Ford Explorer and departed for his apartment in Chelsea, Rick and Kate were left standing on the porch looking each other up and down, neither sure where to begin. This circumstance had been unforeseen by both of them. Kate was still in shock from her father suddenly playing matchmaker. She stood on the porch twirling her hair in her fingers, trying to figure out what to say.

It was finally Rick who broke the silence.

"I think we've both had enough surprises tonight, and you look exhausted."

"Way to make a girl feel special there, Castle." Kate snarked.

"Not that you aren't totally fetching, but...but... you _are_ still recovering...and you must be worn out." Castle fumbled, feigning his usual confusion, but secretly glad to see she was able to fall into their usual banter.

"You coming, Castle?" she whispered,

Kate turned, opened the door and walked into the cabin, kicking off her short wedge heels once she was inside. He couldn't help but see her wince as she planted first one bare foot on the floor, then the other and her arm immediately clutched her side where he realized the incision to remove the bullet from her chest had to have been.

She seemed to deflate right in front of him, her face suddenly pale and her eyes devoid of any spark but that of intense pain, agony she had managed to keep well hidden during dinner. Suddenly her father's abrupt takeover of the table conversation had begun to make sense. He was covering for her so she wouldn't feel self-conscious in the moderately busy restaurant.

His examination of dinner was interrupted, when Kate turned her head toward him her eyes imploring,

"Castle, could you get my Percocet, please?" she whispered, "It's in the kitchen cabinet over the sink."

_"Classic Kate Beckett,"_ Rick thought to himself.

It did not surprise him in the least that Kate would intentionally keep her potent pain medication in the most difficult place for her to reach, given her injuries. That way she would have to really need them to reach up there for them. _"Neither her father, nor her doctor would approve."_ he thought to himself.

Rick shoved those errant thoughts aside, however and retrieved what she asked of him while Kate was in her room, presumably changing out of her sundress. His assumption was confirmed moments later when she reappeared wearing an over-sized red t-shirt (which looked suspiciously like the one that had gone missing from his wardrobe after her brief stay in the loft after the Scott Dunn case) a pair of well-worn yoga pants and fleece-lined slippers.

Kate held out a slightly trembling, almost reluctant hand for the pill that would relieve her of the pain for a few hours so she could get some sleep. He knew she would likely be out for hours, as he remembered the side effects of Percocet quite well. They'd put him on something similar after his implantation surgeries and then had to wean him off of it before he could begin mobility training.

Essentially, Rudy and his team had hijacked phantom limb syndrome to trick his body into accepting the new limbs and eye. He had, at first, received an overwhelming flood of random sensory information all at once, which his nervous system interpreted as pain. Pain that had been constant, intense and nearly unbearable until his organic brain and he slowly acclimated, eventually learning how to filter and prioritize the biometric input from them. Even now he still had migraines after an upgrade, especially upgrades to his ocular implant.

* * *

As Rick kept Kate company with stories of Alexis as a child while the Percocet took effect, and helped her to bed after she got drowsy, neither of them noticed the dark shadow approaching the cabin

He went by many names, as men of his particular skill-set, who went off the reservation into freelance wet-work were wont to do as a cost of doing business. He knew Cole Maddox only by reputation, but the man had vouched for him personally as a tracker, information gatherer and assassin. He could lie in wait for weeks without being seen or heard and then strike from out of nowhere, but he was particularly well-known in certain circles for his skill in arranging _"accidents"_.

He had been provided with the plans for the cabin, as well as how it got its electricity, heating oil and propane. He was thinking an _accidental _fire. Kate Beckett didn't smoke, so that was out of the question, so a propane or gas leak coupled with either a faulty electrical circuit, or the fireplace. He knew she took Percocet, and he had a sizable dose in a pressure injector, enough to show up as an accidental overdose, to be followed up by a house fire.

The fire marshal that his employer had in his pocket had provided a wealth of information about how to set it up to fool even the most hard-nosed arson investigation. He would even call 911 himself, when he was certain she was dead, to make sure the county coroner found enough of her body to identify, as well as come to the conclusion he desired.

In his musings, however, he failed to note his changed status from hunter to prey just like his predecessor had. The last pieces of information his senses collected before the lights went out, was a dark shape coalescing from out of the forest, a low, feral sounding growl, and the massive hairy arm that struck him down.

He never felt a thing as Sasquatch grabbed the back of his web-gear and hauled him into the forest.

* * *

**A short time later**

Rick had waited until he was certain that Kate was sleeping peacefully, and the death-grip she'd had on his organic left hand since he had returned from checking the doors and windows were secure and she'd practically begged him not to leave her had loosened as she drifted fully under.

He had promised to stay until she was fully asleep, and had sat next to her his hand wrapped around hers, as promised. He would not have left regardless, it was clear that something had shaken Kate badly the past week or so, even before Alexis had called her, most likely some yahoo with firecrackers in the middle of the night. He knew it was also likely the drugs talking, but having raised a daughter himself, he would not be surprised if nightmares were another motivator for her fear of going to sleep.

He gently slipped his hand from hers, tucked it into the blankets and made his rounds again when he heard an insistent scratching high up on the back door. When he opened it, Sasquatch was standing under the back porch, the top of his head barely clearing the awning.

_"I found a male human prowling in the dark,"_ He signed, handing Rick a silenced 9mm Tactical Sig Sauer, _"he was carrying this in his clothes."_

"Is he the man I showed you?" Rick whispered.

_"No...different human."_ Sasquatch signed, _"I took him alive, he is in the woods, near the water."_

"Show me." Rick whispered, checking the action on the pistol Sasquatch had handed him before slipping it into his waistband and pulling on his shoes.

* * *

He woke up propped against a tree, whomever or whatever attacked him had expected him to be out longer or he would likely have been secured to something. His head throbbed and his weapon was missing from his holster.

Nobody had told him about private security, or a protective detail. Only the old man and maybe the writer tag-along. The intel he'd been given suggested nobody else in New York even knew where she was, not even the medical examiner she hung out with. He would have to get clear and get more intel, before completing this task.

The man got his bearings dragged himself to his feet and trudged off toward the small black kayak he'd hidden under the dock by the lake. He had another weapon there, but more importantly it would get him back across the lake to where his black Escalade (with his sat phone inside) was parked.

The client had some explaining to do. He'd walked away from jobs for less.

* * *

When Sasquatch brought him to the place he had left him, the man was gone. He thought he had done a better job at incapacitating the man, but he had been trained more for bodyguard duties, chasing people away, not to subdue prisoners. Rick could sympathize. He could see the spot where Sasquatch had dumped him and tracks leading toward the lake.

"You can move faster than me, get to the cabin..._now_... in case he tries to double back there. He does _not _get inside, understand?"

Sasquatch growled and snapped out of phase without further comment. Rick knew that his large friend was angry now, as much at himself as anyone else, but if his quarry doubled back toward the cabin, he was in for a very nasty, dangerous surprise.

Rick flipped his bionic eye over to thermal imaging and followed the fresh tracks, powering up the taser in his bionic hand. He still wanted the man alive, if possible. He had questions. Questions which would not be answered if Sasquatch caught up to the man first in his agitated, angry state.

After following his tracks for a short distance, Rick could tell the man was obviously taking the short trail to the lake. He was able to surmise from the less than straight trail that his quarry was either injured enough to not take the long way around, or was trying to avoid detection, but at sixty miles an hour, he could swing around and maybe get ahead of him. His eye switched to night-vision mode as he powered up to his full speed and took the other trail.

* * *

He had made it to the clearing that opened to the lake, he knew he was almost home free. He'd cut through the woods after only a short time on the trail to shake pursuit, feigning greater injury in the tracks he left before slipping off the footpath. He slipped out of the treeline and was halfway to the dock when he felt himself lifted off the ground and flung ten feet away like a rag doll. He tucked, rolled and was back on his feet to face his assailant.

_"It's the writer...so much the better" _he thought to himself as he moved in to attack.

He came in hard and swung a kick low to take out the man's legs only to feel like he'd kicked a tree. Castle's right hand snapped in, lifting him clean off the ground by his combat harness and threw him into a tree ten feet away.

By the time he was back on his feet Castle was on him again, having crossed the distance in a matter of seconds.

_"God damn he's fast..." _ the thought had only just passed through his brain when the writer's right hand was once more gripping his web-gear and he found himself launched through the air again. This time skidding and rolling to a stop not far from where he wanted to go.

* * *

Rick had held back. He wanted to keep the man off-balance, knock him around enough to take the fight out of him...keep him away from Beckett until he was incapacitated. Then call in Sasquatch to play bad cop in the interrogation. After which he would call in support and they guy would disappear. Gina would see to that. She was ruthlessly efficient in that regard.

As he put on a burst of speed to confront him, he saw the man had crab-walked back onto the dock and was reaching for something. He heard the man pull back the charging lever on the silenced MP-5, saw it tracking upward and dove for cover just before the man opened fire.

A gun changed everything. He now had little choice. He could not let that man leave this area alive. The ring finger on his bionic hand tapped his palm once, changing the setting to lethal and three times the normal charge built up in his right fist. He could smell the artificial skin covering his hand smoldering as he rose to his knees to ground himself before planting his palm on the steel decking and discharged everything into it, electrocuting the man where he knelt on the wet deck as if struck by lightning.

The man's scream was blood curdling, but brief.

When Rick pulled his palm from the deck, the skin from his hand came away with it revealing the servos of his hand. Sensation was not reduced, nor was functionality impaired as he moved his fingers experimentally.

_"What the hell are you?" _

Kate's voice carried across the short distance separating them, her eyes wide, staring in horror at the exposed metal workings of his artificial hand and the shredded remains of still smoking synthetic skin clinging to it. Before she turned and ran.

"Kate! Wait...please..." Castle called after her, his worst fear realized...that she would see his half-human state... and be repulsed by it. What Rick didn't know, was that her terror had little if anything to do with him. In fact the icy tendrils of the panic attack had gripped her long before she had come this far from the cabin.

She only got a few paces up trail before she ran headlong into Sasquatch, bouncing off him with a loud _"oof!"_ When she looked up at the seven-foot tall fur-covered giant, it was more than her fragile emotional state could handle... she screamed and fainted dead away. With surprising tenderness for a creäture his size, Sasquatch gently scooped her up into his powerful arms and waited for Rick to come running.

He didn't wait long.

_****A/N sorry about the cliffy, but I'm setting up a chapter where Rick comes clean with Kate about exactly what he is and whom he once was. I'm going somewhere with this...honest!**_


	9. Revelations

**Chapter Nine  
Revelations**

* * *

_Where you gave me the world I was in  
And a place I could make a stand  
I could never see how you doubted me  
When I'd let go of your hand_

Yeah, and I was much younger then  
And I must have thought that I would know  
If things were going to end

And the Heavens were rolling  
Like a wheel on a track  
And our sky was unfolding  
And it'll never fold back  
Sky blue and black

And I'd have fought the world for you  
If I thought that you wanted me to  
Or put aside what was true or untrue  
If I'd known that's what you needed  
What you needed me to do

Jackson Browne - Sky Blue and Black

* * *

_Previously_

_"What the hell are you?" _

_Kate's voice carried across the short distance separating them, her eyes wide, staring in horror at the exposed metal workings of his artificial hand and the shredded remains of still smoking synthetic skin clinging to it. Before she turned and ran._

_"Kate! Wait...please..." Castle called after her, his worst fear realized...that she would see his half-human state... and be repulsed by it. What Rick didn't know, was that her terror had little if anything to do with him. In fact the icy tendrils of the panic attack had gripped her long before she had come this far from the cabin._

_She only got a few paces up trail before she ran headlong into Sasquatch, bouncing off him with a loud "oof!" When she looked up at the seven-foot tall fur-covered giant, it was more than her fragile emotional state could handle... she screamed and fainted dead away. With surprising tenderness for a creäture his size, Sasquatch gently scooped her up into his powerful arms and waited for Rick to come running._

_He didn't wait long._

* * *

It had begun to rain, and Rick stood by the woodshed behind the cabin, not caring as the rain-soaked through his clothes, his self-esteem at an all time low. Every one of his insecurities about his "prosthetics" raced through his mind.

_"I'm a freak...a half human freak...more machine than man. Kate knows...and she's afraid of me." _

Rick glared at the skeletal servos and mechanisms of his uncovered bionic hand, the look of terror on Kate's face as she'd stared at it, playing on infinite repeat in his mind. Enraged, he balled it into a fist and thrust it into the nearest stack of firewood. He heard not just the crunch of wood, but the strangely satisfying creaking of metal as well, - though he knew deep inside that his hand and arm had been specifically reinforced to prevent just this sort of damage - He could punch his fist through a reinforced steel door, or kick it out of its frame with either leg without sustaining serious damage. That was the problem.

Richard Castle wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole and die.

"She's afraid of me."he whispered, not realizing he had spoken out loud.

"Richard, come in out of the rain," Gillian stated gently, "you _are_ still human, and you will do her no good if you make yourself ill standing out here soaking wet all night."

_"Obviously, Sasquatch called in reinforcements." _Rick thought to himself, unwilling to find the energy to care.

"What difference does it make, Gillian?" Rick whispered mournfully, "You didn't see her face when she saw _this_," he waved his uncovered hand at her, "didn't see the terror in her eyes," he looked down at the ground and whispered, his voice choked with self-loathing, "she's afraid of me... and she should be... I'm a _freak_!"

"Richard Rodgers you are not a... _"freak"_, nor will the human designated Katherine Beckett think you are when she wakes. She will understand when she is again in her right mind. You will be able to speak to her and reassure her." She let go of his bionic hand and took his face in both of hers, lifting his chin and making him look her in the eye. "Richard, you are more than the sum of your component parts, my mother saw it, I see it and so will she if you give her the chance." Gillian stated, in a rare show of heartfelt concern for her mother's friend.

"Now come inside the primitive domicile. I have brought what I need with me to repair your hand and forearm so the human authority figure designated Agent Gina Cowell will have less to be angry with you about." Gillian scolded before taking his organic hand in hers, stroking her thumb across his knuckles soothingly.

Rick blindly followed, uncertain where this sea change in Gillian's attitude toward him had come from, balancing it with the possibility that she had either always had these maternal feelings for him, or they had developed after fifteen years of watching and guiding his life from afar. When they got back inside the cabin, Gillian indicated the kitchen table where she unpacked her portable equipment while Rick went into the bathroom to change out of his wet clothes.

He had always thought it was creepy that she had watched over him, _at her mother's behest_ for years, to be sure, but no more creepy than when he'd found out his own father had done it.

He recalled caving in Alexei Volkov's face with this same bionic fist not four years ago when he'd tried to abduct Alexis from a violin recital. Jackson Hunt had come out of the woodwork to warn him that Volkov was trying to lure him out to get his hands on a living bionic test subject. That he'd wanted to use his little girl to keep him compliant while they studied him. The scrapbook his father had kept of him and Alexis had been difficult to process, even after years of soul-searching.

* * *

**An hour and a half later**

"What about the big guy?" Rick asked out of the blue, as he moved his fingers, testing the range of motion and fit of the new synthetic skin covering his bionic hand. In the end she had done the entire arm, not just his hand and wrist, the new covering seemed to allow more natural sensation that the original.

"If you are concerned about Kate Beckett's knowledge of, or reaction to Sasquatch, you need not worry." Gillian replied matter-of-factly, "I removed _that_ particular memory from her cortex shortly after I arrived. _That _is not her secret to keep. I have selected the most pleasant memory from her childhood that I could find so she will sleep peacefully for the entire night and wake refreshed in the morning."

Shalon had told him from her sick-bed years ago that they had met before she got sick, but she had removed the memory from his mind so completely that he still had no direct knowledge of it. He could attest to the veracity of whatever technique they used to wipe very specific sections of memory from the human mind. Kate would never be troubled in any way by an errant memory of Sasquatch, direct, fleeting or otherwise. As much as he loved the big guy like a brother, he was relieved, Kate had enough things in her life to have nightmares about. _"like me, I guess." _he thought bitterly.

"Gillian, did you..." Rick began, but trailed off.

"No, Richard, I did not remove _all_ of last night's events from her memory," Gillian replied tersely, "only those which duty to _my_ people required of me. We are here to observe, not to interfere, Sasquatch's overprotective intentions to the contrary."

Though Gillian was trying to sound like she was scolding a family pet for misbehavior, (knowing they were well within the bionic giant's range of hearing) Rick could sense from the inflection of her voice, the genuine affection she had for Sasquatch. She wasn't really upset at the lengths the big guy had gone to in the pursuit of her orders to keep watch over Kate for him, but was genuinely concerned for his welfare after they went home.

For the first time in fifteen years, he realized that Gillian completely understood that Sasquatch wasn't some simple-minded beast, but because her superiors likely felt that way, she played that card for the giant's benefit, so she could keep him from being put down when they went back to whatever planet they hailed from. That she apparently had the same affection for _him_ and didn't want to see him hurt either sent a shiver down his spine.

In that moment she was more of a parent to him than his own father (good intentions aside) had ever been.

* * *

**The next morning**

Kate woke slowly curled up in her own bed in the family cabin feeling drugged...like she had for most mornings since her shooting, though this time from the oddly pleasant dream she'd had. The most pleasant dream she'd experienced for a _very _long time. (Unless she counted the sex dreams featuring Castle...which she had always tried very hard _not _to examine too closely over the past few years, especially when she,was still dating Josh) A dream she had not been quite ready to wake from.

It was more a happy memory than a dream...the summer before she'd turned twelve, when she hadn't yet discovered boys or become _"Rebel Becks."_ The year her dad had first inherited the place from an old fishing buddy with no family of his own. Dad had been considering selling the place until she and mom had fallen in love with it. That summer had been magical for all of them, but especially for her. One of the last truly harmonious summers their family ever had.

She had no idea where such a pleasant dream had come from considering the disjointed, terrifying images that flooded back into her brain from the night before. Many of which she was certain must have been hallucinations caused by the nightmare she'd awakened from in a panic to find Castle gone, but his car still in the driveway, only to find him at the boat dock standing over a dead man, with something metallic protruding from the right sleeve of his jacket...a cattle prod maybe? It couldn't have been his hand...he'd just electrocuted a man with it.

Everything had gone dark after that.

_"Must have been hyperventilating and lost consciousness, or blocked the rest out." _She thought to herself. Her pride refused to allow her to even accept the possibility that she had simply fainted. _"Castle must have carried me here."_

She was unsurprised yet irrationally strangely disappointed that aside from her shoes and jacket she was still fully clothed in the sweatshirt and yoga pants she'd changed into after dinner. Though she would have been absolutely mortified had he done more than that before putting her to bed.

When she finally dragged herself out of bed and slowly opened her door, she found Richard Castle sitting on the floor his back to the wall next to the doorway, knees drawn up, his head pillowed in his crossed arms. _"Two arms that both ended in very human looking hands,"_ her brain supplied, for reasons she was not very clear on.

Her heart melted at the sight of him, unable to leave her, even to go to bed. _"Last night must have been a really bad episode."_ she thought to herself. She wanted so badly to believe everything she'd seen last night was just a panic attack...a nightmare fueled hallucination. The last time she had seen him standing over a body, (could it really be less than a year ago?) she had accused him of murder...unfairly as it turned out. She wanted desperately to be wrong now, too.

Contrary to what she'd told him in the hospital she'd heard every word he'd said after she'd been shot, _"Does he really love me so much that he would kill for me?" s_he asked down, she knew the answer to that _question_, and as a homicide cop that frightened her more than she wanted to admit.

Though he'd been careful to keep it out of his statement from that night in the warehouse, Ryan swore to her on his grandmother's grave that he'd seen Castle pick Hal Lockwood up by the throat with just his right hand shake him like a like a rag doll till he dropped his sniper rifle then thrown him _ten feet _into the nearest wall before he started hitting him and would have killed Lockwood with his bare hands

He'd held Lockwood down with his right hand and beaten the assassin's face bloody with his left, only stopping because _she_ had stopped him. For a split second before his eyes softened, she'd seen the fire there, the cold, barely controlled fury. Kate had a hard time reconciling that with the loving son and doting single father she saw whenever he discussed his family. The agony she'd seen crease his brow when he'd told her about the day he'd lost Alexis in a mall in White Plains when she was four.

Yes, Richard Castle would kill to protect her, without a moment's hesitation, like he would for his mother and his daughter. The reason that warmed her heart, terrified her and filled her with a crushing sense of guilt in equal measure. The reason he was camped out on the hard wooden floor next to her bedroom door.

Because he was in love with her.

_****A/N** You want angst? Ok, I've got your angst..**_


	10. Morning After

**Chapter Ten  
Morning After  
**

* * *

_All this time I can't believe I couldn't see  
Kept in the dark but you were there in front of me  
I've been sleeping a thousand years it seems  
Got to open my eyes to everything  
Without a thought, without a voice, without a soul  
Don't let me die here _

_(I'm so cold)  
There must be something more  
Bring me to life_

Evanescence: "Bring Me To Life" (feat. Paul McCoy)

* * *

_Previously_

_Yes, Richard Castle would kill to protect her. Without a moment's hesitation, like he __would__ for his mother and his daughter. The reason __why__ warmed her heart, terrified her and filled her with a crushing guilt in equal measure. The __same __reason he was camped out on the hard wooden floor next to her bedroom door._

_Because he was in love with her. _

* * *

Kate slipped back into her room without making a sound and returned a moment later to drape a comforter from her own bed over his shoulders and managed to wedge a seat cushion from her rocking chair between the small of his back and the wall. Her eyes were drawn to his right hand again and again for a reason she could not seem to explain, along with the scent of wet dog hair.

She couldn't place it, but something about his right hand kept dogging her and she couldn't shake it. The previous night's events were hazy, indistinct and in some places either disjointed or missing altogether. Everything seemed jumbled together by the panic attack she knew she must have had. The only thing she was sure of was that she had panicked and run from Rick, this time literally.

Something must have happened during that panic attack, because she couldn't think of any reason how she could _ever_ believe Rick would harm her. At least not on purpose.

Everything after she'd run from him (and even the reason she'd run was unclear) was just... gone, like her memory had just stopped recording and the only person who could put the pieces back together again for her was sleeping hunched against the wall next to her bedroom door looking like his life was over.

Kate slipped down the stairs to the kitchen and set water to boil to make coffee. She needed something to do before Castle woke up. As awful as she felt for the where he was sleeping, she wasn't quite ready to face him yet.

* * *

Richard Castle woke slowly, his neck stiff from the position he had fallen asleep in. When he moved to stand, a blanket slipped from his shoulders to the floor. He hadn't brought it with him as he hadn't intended to fall asleep, so either Gillian had come back in the middle of the night, which he wouldn't put past her, or Kate was awake. He wasn't sure which thought troubled him more.

He yawned and stretched... Something he knew wasn't necessary for three of his limbs, but was needed to work the muscles in his back and left shoulder. Several muscle groups were in fact connected to his bionic arm, their placement necessary to for his shoulders and lumbar spine to function properly. Those muscular anchor points provided the necessary biometric feedback to prevent his bionic limbs from tearing the rest of his body apart.

He had been encouraged early on to try to move normally, and stretching was one part of that, even though in his head he knew it really wasn't necessary for the functionality of his bionic limbs.

With his back properly aligned, his nose caught the unmistakable aroma of coffee which told him that Kate was indeed up and around. He scooped up the comforter and the chair cushion that were lying on the floor, folded the blanket and placed the two items carefully on her end table before making his way downstairs to face the music.

The advice Gillian had given him (after informing him the new artificial skin she had replicated and grafted to his arm would be better able to withstand the heat of his Taser at full power) was still ringing in his ears.

_"Talk to the human designated Kate Beckett in the morning, Richard. Tell her the truth. She is not the human designated Meredith Chase, nor is she the one designated Kyra Blaine. Unlike the females you have had physical relations with in the past, she is worthy of your love. She will see you for who you are and not judge you for it. From what I and Sasquatch have observed, she did not come here to escape from you, but out of a misguided attempt to protect you."_

* * *

Kate looked up from her coffee at his approach, a light smile rising on her lips in spite of herself at the sight of him. There was no hint of the terror that had been in her eyes the night before and both of them seemed to relax a little at that realization.

"Hey" they both whispered at the same time, as if they both knew what the other was feeling, the shared brain thing which Lanie found adorable and Ryan and Esposito found equally disturbing.

"There's plenty of coffee if you want some," Kate offered, "dad even bought some of that French vanilla creamer you use for the espresso machine at the precinct."

"He did huh?" Rick replied with a wink, "how thoughtful of him."

"Yeah." Kate said wistfully, "he knows how I take my coffee, and he would add it to the decaf I was allowed early on to try to cheer me up."

Rick could tell by the expression on her face that although she had been grateful for the attempt, it hadn't helped, only reminded her of things she was denied because of the bullet wound in her chest. Denied the opportunity to mourn her Captain and mentor properly. Denied the chance to bring her mother's killer to justice. Denied proper rest because of the nightmares that plagued her sleep. Denied her dignity and self-confidence because of the panic attacks that had her gasping for breath and diving for cover at random loud noises or reflections off glass.

He remembered clearly what those nightmares can do to the human psyche. He had dreamed about the accident that took most of his humanity away every night for years. Though those dreams came more and more sporadically over the years, he understood in ways Kate could only begin to realize.

He wanted to help her through this. Help her heal, help her come to terms with what her shooting had done to her, but first he had to be open and honest with her. Let Kate decide for herself how deep into this she wanted to go before he got in any deeper than he already was. He couldn't invest any more of himself only to be rejected again.

The last two months hurt too much as it was.

"Kate, we need to talk."


	11. Coming Clean

**Chapter Eleven  
Coming Clean**

* * *

_Now that I know what I'm without  
You can't just leave me  
Breathe into me and make me real  
Bring me to life_

Wake me up inside  
Wake me up inside  
Call my name and save me from the dark  
Bid my blood to run  
Before I come undone  
Save me from the nothing I've become

Bring me to life  
(I've been living a lie, there's nothing inside)  
Bring me to life

Evanescence: "Bring Me To Life" (feat. Paul McCoy)

* * *

_Previously_

_Rick could tell by the expression on her face that although she had been grateful for the attempt, it hadn't helped, only reminded her of things she was denied because of the bullet wound in her chest. Denied the opportunity to mourn her Captain and mentor properly. Denied the chance to bring her mother's killer to justice. Denied proper rest because of the nightmares that plagued her sleep. Denied her dignity and self-confidence because of the panic attacks that had her gasping for breath and diving for cover at random loud noises or reflections off glass._

_He remembered clearly what those nightmares can do to the human psyche. He had dreamed about the accident that took most of his humanity away every night for years. Though those dreams came more and more sporadically over the years, he understood in ways Kate could only begin to realize._

_He wanted to help her through this. Help her heal, help her come to terms with what her shooting had done to her, but first he had to be open and honest with her. Let Kate decide for herself how deep into this she wanted to go before he got in any deeper than he already was. He couldn't invest any more of himself only to be rejected again._

_The last two months hurt too much as it was._

_"Kate, we need to talk."_

* * *

Kate paled a little when she heard those words out of Rick's mouth. They were never the harbinger of anything good.

"Wait right here, there's something I need to show you." Rick said, walking her to the couch and helping her sit down. She tried to hide it, but he knew how much pain she was in. He could see it in the way she moved and the thin line her lips formed when she turned and lowered herself into the couch.

"Okay." Kate whispered as she pulled her knees under her and let Rick tuck the throw around her lap. She wasn't sure why what he needed to tell her required visual aids, but she was still too unnerved by last night to argue, which she knew was far too unlike her. She hated how timid she'd become since her shooting, it had made her do things she was far too ashamed of.

Chief among them, lying to her partner and running away like a scared child, without any thought for what leaving him alone with that lie might do to him. How much worse his writer's imagination and soft heart would make it for him. After she'd been calling people in a panic the night Castle went missing, she got just a taste what it had been like for him and it had twisted her up inside. After it had turned out that he was okay, she'd gotten chapter and verse from Lanie who'd answered Javi's phone later that morning.

"_You left that man hanging for a month not knowing if you were alive or dead, or if you even gave a damn, and you're upset he hasn't called you back after only a few hours? I know you were hurt and scared girlfriend, but I never in a million years thought you could be so cruel." _

Not long after she'd sent Rick packing, her father had told her what had taken place that night in the waiting room, not all at once and not willingly to be sure. She'd had to drag it out of him a piece at a time, but it painted a picture in her mind that had angered her immensely. Enough to break things off with Josh for good.

She'd had her reasons for coming up here, away from the city and all it's noise. She'd needed the quiet here to heal without jumping out of her skin at every car horn or police siren. She'd thought those same good reasons extended to not calling Castle like she'd promised she would, but the harsh tone of Lanie's voice had made her doubt her own judgment at least on that score.

Kate had no doubt in her mind that, with all of his connections, Castle could have found her with ridiculous ease. But he hadn't, because she'd asked him to wait for her to call. He'd waited faithfully for her to keep her word, even when it had been readily apparent to everyone else that she had no intention of doing so. If she hadn't known he was coming back shortly, she would have let herself break down and cry.

* * *

Rick came back five minutes later. He'd meant to retrieve his laptop from the car to look up what he needed on Google and hadn't laid eyes on the scrapbook that was sitting in the front passenger seat in over a decade. He'd started it shortly after Alexis was born on the off-chance anything ever happened to him. He'd known for years that the NSA would never let them have his body to bury and had hidden this where no one but his mother would ever think to look for it. In case Alexis ever had questions after he was gone.

Trust that extra-terrestrial snoop Gillian to know _exactly_ where it was, bless her alien heart.

He sat down on the couch and patted the space next to him as he laid the scrapbook out on his lap.

"This is who Richard Rodgers was before I became Richard Castle." He whispered.

Kate looked at each page, fascinated, she looked at him warmly when she got to his official military photo. She seemed fine until she got to the first page marking the accident. There was a dry letter written by the Commander of Edwards Air Force Base for his mother if he hadn't made it which brought a tear to Kate's eye. He had done very little to think about how close he had been to death that night before his mother arrived at his bedside. He brought up the video recording of the accident on his laptop, not even Gina knew he had a copy of it. Kate was it for him and he was only going to do this once. She needed to see all of it, so he played it for her: As the video came on his face in the helmet and his voice running the checklist were unmistakable:

_"Lx4 to NASA-1"_

_"BCS arm-switch is on_

_"OK Rodger"_

_"Landing rocket arm-switch is on."_

_"Here comes the throttle, circuit breakers in."_

_"We have separation."_

_"Inboard and outboard zero on. We're coming forward with the side-stick"_

_"Look's good" _

Rick knew what was coming, it was a moment seared into his mind forever, he still had nightmares about it, but he could tell from the soft smile on Kate's lips as his voice ran down the checklist that she had no clue what was coming next. His blood pressure went up, making the interface with his artificial limbs tingle. He moved to turn it off...to spare her what was coming next, but she squeezed his hand and he faltered so it continued...

_"Rodger..."_

_"I've got a blowout in damper 3!"_

_"Get your pitch to zero."_

_"Pitch is out! I can't hold altitude!"_

_"Correction alpha hold is off, threat selector to EMERGENCY!"_

_"Flight Com! I can't hold it! She's breaking up! She's breaking..."_

Castle watched Kate's eyes widen in horror as the experimental plane he'd been piloting flipped end over end before what was left of the fuselage came to a stop upside down on the lake bed. The recording went on for only a few moments longer, lingering on a view of the flaming wreckage which had marked the end of his military career.

Until Alexis had been born, he'd often wished he hadn't survived it. His daughter had saved him from the very same fate that befell the others who came after him. She'd given him something to live for.

Kate's face became even paler when she saw the photo on the next page of the scrapbook. One he had never seen before until the moment Kate's eyes landed on it. A photo the doctors had likely taken of him for whatever medical journal their work to save him had been destined for - before everything about the accident had been rendered ten levels above top-secret.

In the news it had been listed as an unmanned remote-controlled test failure.

Kate was going into vapor lock. He could see that she was rapidly losing the battle to keep her composure. This was the one thing he had not meant for her to see. Hell, he hadn't wanted to see it either, how he had appeared to his mother when she first walked into his hospital room.

_"_God damn you, Gillian, you alien bitch." __Rick thought to himself_. ___"my daughter was supposed to see this."__

Rick pulled the scrapbook off Kate's lap and pulled her into his arms as she finally broke down.

"Shh, it's okay," he whispered through his own tears, knowing it wasn't, as he tucked her head under his chin, "I'm right here."

"H...how bad..?" Kate choked out and he knew he couldn't lie.

"Lost both legs, my right arm, and my right eye." Rick said by rote.

Kate seemed perplexed at this, as she had seen the way he could move when the situation called for it.

"P-prosthetics?"

Kate's voice was shaky, but with sympathy, not the revulsion Rick had expected. He suddenly understood why Gillian had placed that terrible image where she had, from wherever it was she had gotten it from.

"Of a sort, yes." Rick replied.

"But... "Kate spluttered, "I've seen you move...seen you walk and run... seen you fight when you had to."

"Yeah, I was the grand experiment." Rick muttered bitterly. "These came with a few...extras."

Rick walked to the fireplace and retrieved the cast iron poker from its holder. He sat on the coffee table across from her, gripped it in his fist and bent it double between fingers and thumb.

"Prosthetics was how the doctors explained it to my mother and I would prefer it if you don't take that away from her. She had to see my broken body lying in that hospital bed for days on end. She'd been prepared to take care of what was left of me for the rest of my life. I only agreed to this," Rick waved his left hand across his body, " to give mother something to hope for."

Kate leaned into him and wept bitterly wondering where the nine-year-old on a sugar rush, and the self-centered egotistical jackass had gone.

"It took me a year to learn to walk, use my right arm, right eye, learn to filter and accept data from all of them. To this day, I still get screaming headaches from time to time."

"Guess that explains the aversion to paperwork." Kate muttered.

"Sometimes, yeah. But I also have reams of my own to fill out after I leave the precinct if I use my resources on a case." Castle replied.

"I can't talk about what I did between then and when Meredith brought Alexis to my door. Our marriage was a farce from day one. But the day I saw Alexis I knew she was mine. I couldn't do what my father did to mom and me. I couldn't just disappear like Gina's predecessor wanted me to. I let Meredith burn me in exchange for full custody. She didn't have it in her to be the mother mine was."

"And your books?" Kate asked.

I wrote _In A Hail of Bullets_ in the Air Force Academy, just nobody would touch it until I needed a cover." Rick replied, relieved to be on a more pleasant topic of conversation,

"With the exception of _Hell Hath No Fury_, which was done while I was on assignment, I wrote them all. I mean, really, angry Wiccans out for blood? Seriously? Though I did have some help with the research early on. The entire Storm series was me though. Didn't use any of my actual assignments, those are more science fiction than mystery.

At Kate's curious look he shrugged.

"Nobody was as surprised as Gina when Black Pawnactually started showing a profit. They went legit just before I wrote _Deadly Storm_. Only three people who still work there now aside from Gina and myself know that it started as an NSA/CIA front. The_ Nikki Heat_ royalties alone will bring in enough money that Alexis won't have to work a day in her life if she wasn't so hell-bent on spreading her wings."

Kate could hear in his tone of voice that, as sad as he was that she was growing up, he had never been prouder of his little girl.

"She'll have better options than I did." Rick stated with absolute certainty. "and if I have my way she will never know just how completely she saved my life."

At that point, Rick grew silent. Kate could tell that there was still something eating at him. Something more recent that was clouding his features, stealing away the Rick she'd come to know over the years. He was turning away, unable to look at her.

"Rick...please...what is it?"

"I'm sorry Kate." He whispered before he rose from his seat on the coffee table and turned, heading for the door. "I'm so, so sorry."

"For what?" she asked.

"You shouldn't be here." he said back to her, the hurt in his tone plain to hear. "I can run sixty miles an hour flat-out, see a man with a rifle from half a mile away in the dark, I should have saved you. It's my fault you were shot."

Kate had seen the hurt in his eyes the minute he'd walked into her hospital room that day, at first she thought it was pity...for her. But now she saw it for what it was...guilt. He blamed himself for her being shot. For all his strength and speed, though, even he couldn't outrun a bullet.

"Oh. God," Kate thought to herself, "...he thinks I blamed him... Just like Josh did...he thinks that's why I left..."

"Castle...Rick...no...please don't go." she said loud enough for him to hear, which made him stop and turn around.

When his eyes and hers met from across the room, she held her hand out to him and said with all the conviction she could muster.

"Rick, I love you. The only people to blame for me being shot are the man who pulled the trigger and the man who hired him."

"I need you to stop." Rick whispered.

"Stop what, Rick?" Kate couldn't believe her ears.

"Stop chasing this, stop investigating." He said , knowing how she felt about her mother's case.

"I... can't...Rick. I have to finish this...have to put it to rest so I can have the kind of relationship I want."

"Not forever, Kate... just until we have something solid to go on."

"How are we gonna find that if we've got nowhere to start?" Kate pleaded, "The guy who shot me is gone. Dick Coonan, gone. Hal Lockwood, gone. Montgomery, gone. My mom … everybody is gone, Castle!"

Kate tried not to start crying again, but her emotions were just too fragile. Rick wasn't sure what to tell her, so he started with the truth.

"Kate, before I came to see you I got a call, he didn't give me a name, just that he's a friend of Montgomery's. Said he owed Roy his life. Apparently Montgomery sent him some files, files that if they ever got out, could hurt some very powerful people. They were using those files as a threat to keep Montgomery's family from ever being harmed. Your safety was also part of the deal."

"But they came after me anyway, Castle." Kate pointed out.

"He said he didn't get the files until after you were shot." Rick said quietly, "He said you'll be safe for now, on one condition. You can't go near the case. If you do he can't guarantee either yours, or Roy's family's safety. If you dig, they will kill you."

"And this man," Kate asked, her anger beginning to override her hurt feelings, "you trust him?"

"Not as far as Alexis could throw him. But for now we don't have a choice." The guy I took out last night, I'm not sure if he was here to kill you, or if he was just gathering intel to do it later. He pulled a gun on me before I could ask him."

Kate swallowed hard, looking at Rick's right hand. Knowing it was artificial didn't make her feel any better about what she saw, or thought she saw, the night before.

"For now he's lost a contractor," two actually he thought to himself, "the skilled ones don't come cheap and I had a guy I know spread the word around that he went missing over what was supposed to be an unguarded soft target, he may have trouble getting another for a while."

Kate blanched and raised an eyebrow at his assessment, but could not refute it. She could barely walk to the nearby lake and back without being winded, so she let him continue.

"This deal of Smith's only has to hold until you're back on your feet, and the feelers I put out quietly get me somewhere. If he sends somebody else in the meantime, I can handle them."

"What about Alexis?" Kate asked in a low whisper.

Rick was well aware there was only one thing that was certain to bring dear old dad out of the woodwork, and that was it. Jackson Hunt had gone by many names, but he was known by reputation as "Nemesis"one of the most skilled and ruthless wet-work operators to come out of the cold war. The last guy to make the mistake of going after his family was currently cooling his heels at the bottom of Lake Superior. He'd chartered the boat for that cruise personally.

"Let's just say that if anybody is ever that stupid. They will be bringing the nuclear option down on their heads." Rick replied.

Kate shivered at the cold tone his voice took on, the finality of his only words on that subject. She knew how much Rick loved his daughter. There was no doubt in her mind how deep that well went. To know he loved her that much as well both comforted and terrified her.

"Okay." She whispered, "for you and Alexis...I'll keep this deal."

Kate was sure in the knowledge that Rick would not lie to her, at least not about this.

He had her back.


	12. Ghost In the Machine

_****Author's note** Though I know how much you guys hate it when I take too much time away from Caskett to devote to secondary characters and their back-stories, this chapter is relevant, I promise. Besides I haven't gotten to play with my version of Gina much yet, and I want to take a peek into who she is for a moment. Please bear with me.**_

* * *

**Chapter Twelve  
Ghost in the Machine**

* * *

_Previously_

_"Let's just say that if anybody is ever that stupid, they will be bringing the _nuclear option_ down on their heads." Rick replied._

_Kate shivered at the cold tone his voice took on, the finality of his only words on that subject. She knew how much Rick loved his daughter. There was no doubt in her mind how deep that well went. To know he loved her that much as well both comforted and terrified her._

_"Okay." She whispered, "for you and Alexis...I'll keep this deal."_

_Kate was sure in the knowledge that Rick would not lie to her, at least not about this._

_He had her back._

* * *

Half in, half out of phase, Gillian watched the scene play out before her between Richard and the human female designated Katherine Beckett. She had observed the human race for nearly two hundred and fifty of their years and she had never allowed herself to feel such an attachment to one of their kind as she felt for Richard. She was an anthropologist by training and even among her own kind she had a reputation for being what the humans would call a _"cold fish", _(though she had heard the term _"ice princess" _occasionally directed at her by Richard when he thought she could not hear him)so this level of attachment was a strange sensation for her. With the exception of her mother, she had never developed this level of affection for anyone before, not even among others of her own kind.

She felt a strange sensation when they reached the page where she had inserted the photo that Richard's mother had kept locked in the bottom of the antiquated wooden storage container at the foot of her bed for the last twenty years. She believed that the humans called it..._guilt_. It was a strange sensation, and she decided to catalog it later for future study.

She felt deep regret for making Katherine Beckett have to see that image of him lying wounded and broken with three limbs missing and half his face covered in bandages in retrospect. She hadn't planned on Richard showing her the visual representation of his accident, or she was certain she would not have done so. It had simply been one blow to many.

She had only wanted for Katherine to truly understand him. To see him as a whole being, not just the sum of his artificial parts. That those components had been made a part of him at terrible cost and to this day exacted a price even Richard wasn't fully conscious of.

Forcing her to see him at his lowest and most broken like that had been unfair of her. Both to Katherine and to Richard and she'd had no right to do that. She had gone too far and she saw that now.

That had not been her decision to make, it had been Richard's to decide how much of his pain to reveal and had stolen that decision from him.

Years ago, as a lesson in humility, her mother had assigned her the task of going through Richard's accumulated memories. Ostensibly to make sure that all memory of them had been removed, but she had also been assigned to file a full report on humanity's first attempt at bionics. Something their race had mastered millennia ago.

The leaps in technological advancement the Terrans had been making had been one of the reasons they had been sent to observe them in preparation for a possible first contact event in the first place.

To make a long story short, she knew the human designated Richard Alexander Rodgers better than anyone, perhaps even better than he knew himself. Though she had only been studying Katherine Houghton Beckett for a short period of time, she had recently taken the opportunity during the seven rotational cycles her father had been absent to do as full a cortex scan on Katherine while she slept as she had once done on Richard.

There was good reason the two of them were drawn to each other, and it was not just because their physical appearance met the accepted criteria for human standards of beauty. They had similar flaws. Their emotional and physical needs complemented each other. In areas where one was weak the other was strong. They were good for each other.

Gillian could not justify her actions logically. They ran counter to every pre-contact protocol her people adhered to (and she had written many of them herself) but she wanted them both to be _happy_... together. Could it be that she was slowly evolving into what humans would call a _"sappy romantic"_ like her mother?

Was Shalon not currently within the extreme time dilation of TLC stasis, Gillian was certain that her mother would be laughing at her and saying _"I told you so." _

There were some things that simply transcended every species. No matter how far removed in time and space.

When Gillian was completely satisfied that Richard and Katherine were in what the humans called _"a good place" _she adjusted her TLC device to slip completely out of phase and left them safety in the capable hands of Sasquatch.

She had reports to her superiors falsify.

* * *

A dark-haired green-eyed woman dressed in a crisp business suit that nobody recognized stepped out of the elevator and into the 12th Precinct Homicide squad-room. Gina noted that little had changed since the last time she had been there nearly a year and a half before when she had arrived here cloaked in her cover identity of Gina Cowell, Richard Castle's blood sucking ex-wife and publisher who had apparently come to whisk him away for a summer in the Hamptons.

Though she had only been doing her job, she had sensed at the time that something else was going on. It became even more apparent that she had interrupted something important to Richard when he had refused to speak with her the entire two months he had spent in the lab not to mention the month of testing on the upgrades to his eye.

It wasn't until later when she'd discovered that, by swooping in and playing the ex-wife card that she had nearly fatally screwed up his "cover" at the precinct. She'd had to play things out and set up a public falling out to get him partially out of the mess she'd put him in, then through her contacts carefully "arrange" several Doctors without Borders missions for her boyfriend which she knew from the good Dr. Davidson's psych profile he would not be able to refuse so Richard would be able to reconnect with the detective he was following to keep up his pretense of following her for his books.

The new Captain had kicked Rick out as soon as she had arrived. She'd worked too hard to get him back here where she could keep an eye on him.

She liked the fact that for the first time in years she could actually be herself, albeit with slightly different credentials. She had been a hell of a FBI field agent in her day. She'd heard that her old partner Carlos Villante had recently taken over command of the Attorney General's special task force. She'd gotten a constant ribbing from him over the years for having a soft cushy job as a book publisher while he was out dealing with real threats to national security. But she knew it was all in good fun.

Her charge had more commendations for valor and service to his country than both of them combined and Villante's security clearance was high enough that he knew it. It was an honor to be even near Richard Rodgers, much less be assigned to him on a regular basis.

The desk sergeant, a short-haired blonde woman in her same age bracket, who's name plate read _Velasquez_ greeted her professionally, and she flashed her credentials.

"Regina Bishop, Department of Homeland Security" Gina stated crisply, "I'm here to have a sit-down with Captain Victoria Gates."

Captain Gates appeared from her office moments later and led her to her office before closing the door.

"What can I do for Homeland Security today?" Gates stated, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice that a fed had basically walked into her house demanding her attention without an appointment.

"I'm here to speak with you about Richard Castle." Gina stated, letting a small amount of steel into her voice. Noting that Gates reacted to it immediately.

"The writer? What has he done to embarrass the department?" Gates replied testily, "I don't know what kind of shop my predecessor was running, but I don't have room in my precinct for civilians playing cop."

"United States Air Force Major Richard Alexander Rodgers is most definitely _not_ a civilian, nor is he merely a writer, _dilettante_ or otherwise." Gina replied, all pretense of civility now gone.

"_I'll let her stew for a bit about where I heard _that_ reference."_ she thought to herself.

"He has been decorated for valor on no less that six occasions. Two of which were for operations that _never happened_, if you catch my meaning, and at least once by the City of New York while consulting for this _very_ precinct I might add. So I would appreciate it if, when you speak of him in my presence, you do so with a little more respect, _Captain."_

Gates rocked back on her heels for a moment before she sat at her desk. Gina recognized the tell for what it was. She was trying to project her authority, to get an upper hand on this situation. Under most situations, she would be happy to allow such a gathering of equilibrium. This time, however she was the one establishing dominance.

"I'm going to lay my cards on the table here, _Victoria_, just so we understand each other." Gina stated, as she casually sat on the corner of the Captain's desk. She saw how Gates worked her jaw, grinding her teeth at such casual disregard for her authority.

"I think you may have already guessed that I work for a federal agency _other_ than Homeland Security. So let me spell out a few things for you."

Before Gates could offer a suitable comeback, Gina continued.

"When Detective Beckett is cleared to return to active duty, Richard Castle is going to call his good friend Mayor Weldon, who is then going to call you and order you to reinstate him to active service as a consultant with the NYPD and authorize him to act as her partner. You will follow that order to the letter and behave just as you would if this call had come as a complete surprise."

Gina waited a beat, to gauge her reaction, then lowered the boom.

"Richard will, of course defer to your authority as Captain of this precinct just as he did with your predecessor, Captain Montgomery, but let me make one thing perfectly clear, you _will_ extend to him every _possible_ courtesy."

Gina waited a few moments to let her words sink in, then she rose from the corner of the desk and made of show of allowing the older woman to finally respond to the attack on her authority.

"I really don't appreciate it when a Federal agent simply walks into my precinct and throws their weight around about how I see fit to run my house."

Gina turned at that statement with a predatory gleam in her eye. A look that had made more than one interrogation subject cower in fear.

"Oh, no, I was just explaining the facts of life, _Victoria_." Gina replied casually, the lightness in her tome belying the expression in her eyes.

"_Throwing my weight around_ would entail informing you that if you do not comply with the scenario I have just laid out that I could and would end your law enforcement career with a single word. After which you would be spending your golden years in solitary confinement in an unnamed federal facility in legal limbo for interfering with the cover of an active _national security_ asset."

Gina waited for that information to set in, before relaxing her stance.

"But since I'm _not_ here to throw my weight around, I won't need to do that, now will I?"

At Gates' curt shake of her head, Gina turned and opened the door to her office, before she added in passing, "I think it goes without saying that, in the interest of national security, nothing we just spoke of is to leave this room under any circumsatnces, and that _officially_, I was never here."

Gina made a show of closing the blinds on the office door before walking out and closing it, just as the sound of an empty coffee cup shattering against the wall could be heard inside the office along with a series of muttered curses. Rick will have to step very lightly when he came back, of that she was certain, but he will be going back.

"You may want to give her a few minutes before you go in there." She said sweetly to Officer Velasquez, "I had to give her some bad news, and she isn't taking it well."

Gina stepped onto the elevator and waited until the doors closed in front of her before she smiled with some amount of mirth.

Sometimes Regina Bishop _really_ loved her job.


	13. Rising Storm

**Chapter Thirteen  
Rising Storm**

* * *

"_You never bend, you never break  
You seem to know just what it takes  
You're a fighter  
It's in the blood, it's in the will  
It's in the mighty hands of steel  
When you're standin' your ground  
And you never get hit when your back's to the wall  
Gonna fight to the end and you're takin' it all  
You got the touch"_

Stan Bush: "The Touch

* * *

_Previously_

_Gina made a show of closing the blinds on the office door before walking out and closing it, just as the sound of an empty coffee cup shattering against the wall could be heard inside the office along with a series of muttered curses. Rick will have to step very lightly when he came back, of that she was certain, but he will be going back._

"_You may want to give her a few minutes before you go in there." She said sweetly to Officer Velasquez, "I had to give her some bad news, and she isn't taking it well."_

_Gina stepped onto the elevator and waited until the doors closed in front of her before she smiled with some amount of mirth._

_Sometimes Regina Bishop really loved her job._

* * *

Richard Castle stepped out of the elevator into the 12th Precinct rounding the corner into the Homicide bullpen. Ryan had called him shortly after _"Special Agent Brunhilde the Valkyrie Fed"_ as he'd taken to calling her had swept in and hoisted Gates up by her own petard in her office without so much as an appointment.

Rick knew at once whom it had been. Gina didn't get to play fed very often, but when the rare opportunity presented itself she seemed to relish getting heavy-handed. From the way Gates had been passive aggressively throwing her weight around "establishing her authority" since then, it was clear that Gina may have gotten over-excited and gone a little too _"Men in Black"_ on her. This hadn't been what he had in mind when he'd asked Gina to help grease the wheels to get him back into the precinct. If he'd wanted to go this route, he would have gotten clearance from Gina and "read her in" himself. He hadn't thought at the time that there was a reason for him to stay, only now there was.

* * *

Since the incident with the assassin, and his admission to Kate about his _"upgrades"_ he hadn't stayed at the cabin with Kate the whole two months. She had things to work out quietly alone, just like he had once upon a time and he respected her need for space to do that. He went up to visit on weekends and dinner with Kate and her father on Sundays. Sasquatch kept him up-to-date about security concerns, though he had little to report recently.

Kate had called him in the middle of the night at least once or twice a week when she woke from a nightmare, though only two of those had been bad enough for her to ask him to drive up before his regular weekend visit. The most recent one had been after she'd gone for her psych evaluation to return to work. The therapist had been quite thorough and had pushed all the_"right"_ buttons. Kate had kept her composure through the session by force of will, but the nightmare she'd had when she returned to the cabin had been really bad. Bad enough to ask him to stay for the last two weeks before she returned to the city, not to mention a few nights on the couch in her apartment after that.

Kate would be coming back to work in a few days, mostly desk duty until she re-qualified with her service weapon and jumped through all the departmental regulated hoops for returning from a traumatic injury. He didn't want Gina's poor people skills to be hanging over her head as she would have enough on her plate. He still blamed himself for her being shot, and he would take his own lumps for Gina's lack of tact and respect, Kate shouldn't have to pay the price for it.

* * *

Velasquez greeted Castle as warmly as the current climate in the precinct would allow. Nobody who'd watched him beating his brains out working Kate's shooting was happy about the way Gates had casually dismissed him or the defeated look in his eye when she and LT had been ordered to hustle him out like he was a common criminal. He had earned his place among them, and everybody thought he'd deserved better treatment, considering what he'd done for their solve rate the last few years. Gates being former I.A.B. did little to help her case with the rank and file either.

Rick waited patiently in the guest chairs next to the captain's office wearing the visitor's pass he'd been given earlier, looking almost sadly at Kate's desk with its family of elephants, his chair still sitting next to it waiting for him. Ryan and Espo had looked almost affronted on his behalf for not being allowed to sit in his usual spot while he waited. In their eyes he had done nothing wrong and should not have to be treated like he was being called into the principal's office.

What the boys didn't know was that it was he who had asked for this appointment, not Gates. He was here to clear the air and try to make nice, not put on airs. As much as he felt odd for sitting where he was, he would not have felt right sitting in his chair without Kate there. He'd done that for too long after Kate's shooting for his comfort level.

Once he made nice with Captain Gates, he wasn't planning on staying much longer than it would take to invite Ryan and Esposito out for drinks at _The Old Haunt_. If things worked out, maybe he would be able to extend that invitation to include Victoria Gates someday. But not today.

* * *

"Mr. Castle?" Gates stated, her voice a mix of irritation and curiosity. "Come inside and close the door."

The boys gave him a long look, as if measuring him for a coffin, then hunkered down trying to look busy before Gates could see them. By the time Rick had pulled the door closed behind him, Captain Gates was already seated behind her desk.

"Your service record made for some interesting reading, Major, what little of it wasn't redacted." Gates said without preamble. "Top of your class in flight school, flew F-15's for two years, three confirmed air to air kills in Desert Storm. Test pilot with NASA after the war and on the short list to pilot a Space Shuttle mission, but your official life disappeared into black ink after May of 1992, care to illuminate any of that for me?"

Victoria Gates was not a stupid woman and was certain her fishing expedition would get her nowhere. She had, however expected some form of childish remark, given what she's heard about the man, but was rather surprised at the serious look he leveled at her.

"Captain," Rick began, doing his best to not come off as condescending, "for your sake, I'm gonna forget you asked me that question. I could give you the old stand-by _'I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you,' _joke, but that would be in poor taste, given we're in a homicide squad room. I'm pretty sure you _know_ what a redacted file means. You aren't cleared to know, I'm _not_ cleared to be honest, you likely wouldn't believe half of it anyway. Hell, some of it _I_ still find hard to swallow looking back and I was the one who lived it."

Rick relaxed for a moment and leaned back into his chair while he gave the new Captain the space to digest what he'd said. All told she was taking it quite well. He could tell she wasn't happy he was stonewalling her, but from the look in her eyes and the set of her jaw she respected the position he was in. He knew it was time to get down to business and get out of her hair.

"Captain, I came to apologize for Gina's behavior, from what I heard, she came down on you like a ton of bricks when all I asked her to do was clear the way for me to come back. If you want to take that out on me, feel free, but all I ask in return is that you don't let Regina Bishop's lack of people skills blow back onto Detective Beckett. Kate deserves better."

Gates may have been outmaneuvered and left with little choice but to take him back, but he knew it was going to be his responsibility to be the velvet glove to soften the blow of Gina's iron fist. _"An interesting analogy given the reality of the situation,"_ he thought to himself.

"Don't get me wrong," Rick continued, "I love my writing, but for the first time since Desert Storm, _aside_ from raising my daughter, I have the opportunity to do something important. To be part of something I don't have to hide from Alexis that I can feel proud of. I'd forgotten what that felt like until now."

Gates' eyes seemed to soften a fraction at the mention of his daughter. It had been what had softened Beckett to him once upon a time, he'd bonded over fatherhood with Montgomery as well. As it had turned out the man had known what it felt like to carry a deep dark secret around. He hoped someday the shared experience of parenthood could be the opening to a similar relationship with Gates.

"Thank you for coming down, Mr. Castle. Gates replied, "I appreciate you respecting my authority enough to come in yourself to clear the air. Now get out of my precinct, I don't want to see you around here again until Detective Beckett reports for desk duty."

* * *

Gates wanted to be angry at Richard Castle after his publicist, Paula Haas (whom it would seem really was a literary publicist) called and made this appointment, she really did. But to his credit he _had_ obeyed her and left without incident when she'd kicked him out seven weeks ago, even though she had been less than kind – hell, she'd been a bitch and she knew it – even though it hadn't escaped her notice that he'd been grieving and guilt-ridden at the time. Given his military background (what little of it she now knew about) she felt better about letting him hit the streets with one of her detectives.

She had spent the last couple days looking over the case files from the last three years and the solve rate had been ten percent higher since he'd begun shadowing Beckett, (who had an impressively high solve rate to begin with) which was likely how Roy Montgomery had been able to justify his continued presence after that first year. A solve rate which had dropped dramatically with both of them gone.

If that state of affairs was allowed to continue for too long after Beckett returned to active duty, One Police Plaza would not be looking at Richard Castle, they would be looking at her and her leadership. Agent Bishop notwithstanding, her job wouldn't be worth a plugged nickel after that. Comp/Stat was everything to the upper echelon brass.

She remembered what her Uncle Jacob, who'd been in the CIA since his OSS days in WWII, had said when he'd gotten her the redacted version of Richard Castle's file. Something he'd warned her had been far too easy to for him to get his hands on, all things considered.

"_Vicki, darlin', I don't know what Rodgers was involved in with 'the Company', but it had to be some pretty next level shit. His unredacted file is so far over my security clearance level it should be marked _'burn before reading'_. Do _not_ cross this guy if you can help it. Some really bad shit happened to the last idiot who screwed with him or his kid. Something of "the body parts have never been found" variety. He's got somebody huge protecting him... a goddamn NSA ghost."_

Her uncle hadn't been able to get her anything more concrete than the file and that warning, but ten years in Internal Affairs and her own suspicious nature lead her to believe he had been allowed to access only what they wanted to reach her eyes and ears.

Uncle Jacob's security clearance had been pulled shortly after that and he'd been retired with_"the thanks of a grateful nation." _They'd even given him a commendation for his OSS work which had been overlooked at the end of WWII and a generous pension, but she knew that there was more to it than that... a warning shot across her bow, of that she was more than certain. A subtle reminder from Regina Bishop about which one of them held the cards.

She didn't appreciate Regina Bishop's strong-arm tactics, but in truth her job _had_ brought her into contact with more than one Federal Agent. The alphabet soup agencies out of Washington DC seemed to breed that attitude. She almost felt sorry for Richard Castle for having to put up with her regularly. _"God, what a bitch."_ she thought to herself.

Victoria Gates disconnected the smoke detector in her office and burned Castle's file in her metal trash can. As long as Richard Castle's secrets didn't effect the way her precinct ran, she had little choice but to go along. His most redeeming quality in her eyes was that he did seem to care about taking killers off the street. If he can keep that up, she could eventually learn to overlook the rest of it.

Especially if he was as good for Detective Beckett as she had overheard people saying.

* * *

**An hour later**

Richard Castle walked through the forms of Krav Maga he had learned as part of his physical therapy.

His trainer had been read in back then and had helped him modify Krav Maga to suit his needs. The adaptive nature of that martial art allowed him to maximize the attack and blocking potential of his bionic limbs while protecting his organic arm from critical injury but still utilize it in a fight. Other than his left arm, his limbs did not need the practice, they responded to his commands with the immediate speed and power they always had.

He hadn't seriously worked out other than to keep his organic left arm in shape in a long time, but his fight with the assassin at the Beckett cabin had been a wake up call he could not ignore. The strength and speed of his bionics had almost not been enough that night. He'd underestimated the man and had nearly paid for it with his life. He'd trade his life for Kate in a heartbeat, but he knew he couldn't keep her safe if he continued to fight stupid and got himself killed. Back in the city he couldn't count on Sasquatch as heavily to back him up like he could in the woods. He was her only backup in a city of eight million people any one of which might be carrying a bullet with her name on it.

As anticipated, the muscle memory of his left arm was the weak link, so he worked it mercilessly, all the while allowing him to work off the energy rippling in the interfaces with his bionic limbs. He needed to work off his anger too, his rage at the forces arrayed against Kate. He was on a mission, one that had to succeed.

Kate wanted it to be done legally, get the justice her mother had been denied for so long, and he wanted that for her too. But if the worst occurred, and anything happened to Kate, he was prepared to go dark, find out who was behind all of this and sanction them with extreme prejudice. As long as Alexis was safe, he wouldn't much care what happened to Richard Castle after that.

He finished with the heavy bag an actual target for his blows. Before long it was nearly destroyed, the tatters of it barely hanging from the chain. He took it down, cleaned up the mess, hung another and started again.

Kate needed him to be more. She needed him to be the man she knew, the man his mother had raised him to be. The good man he knew deep down he could be. She trusted that he was more than the sum of his inorganic parts, just as Gillian had been trying to tell him.

So he would be the man she needed him to be. The man she fell in love with. Even if he wasn't sure he was good enough, he loved her enough to try.

Kate Beckett was worth it.


	14. Rise

_****Author's Note** I know, I know...I couldn't help but use some more of the Rise imagery here. I simply could not help myself. I would have written this before the weekend, but I had my 22 year old nephew over to celebrate his birthday and marathin play Dragon Age: Inquisition. Wanted to get this out before Christmas eve though. Enjoy!  
**_

* * *

**Chapter Fourteen  
Rise**

* * *

"_Starting again is part of the plan  
and I'll be so much stronger  
holding your hand.  
Step-by-step I'll make it through  
I know I can._

_May not make it easier  
but I have felt you  
Near all the way"_

Gloria Estefan: "Coming Out Of the Dark"

* * *

_Previously_

_Kate wanted it to be done legally, get the justice her mother had been denied for so long, and he wanted that for her too. But if the worst occurred, and anything happened to Kate, he was prepared to go dark, find out who was behind all of this and sanction them with extreme prejudice. As long as Alexis was safe, he wouldn't much care what happened to Richard Castle after that._

_He finished with the heavy bag an actual target for his blows. Before long it was nearly destroyed, the tatters of it barely hanging from the chain. He took it down, cleaned up the mess, hung another and started again._

_Kate needed him to be more. She needed him to be the man she knew, the man his mother had raised him to be. The good man he knew deep down he could be. She trusted that he was more than the sum of his inorganic parts, just as Gillian had been trying to tell him._

_So he would be the man she needed him to be. The man she fell in love with. Even if he wasn't sure he was good enough, he loved her enough to try._

_Kate Beckett was worth it._

* * *

Kate Beckett's return to the precinct occurred with little fanfare. The applause that greeted her return was muted slightly at Castle's quiet insistence, as she was still a little leery of sudden loud noises. Though she hid it behind a very well practiced smile, even this much attention lavished upon her made her feel a little apprehensive.

She kept her shoulders back and he head high though she still had to re-qualify to get her service weapon back, but her badge was once again riding in its place on her belt. She was almost there. She'd survived the worst of it, and the nightmares were under control for the most part.

When they weren't she knew without reservation that Castle would be at her side with a single text message or phone call, even though part of her rankled at the feeling of needing him as a security blanket. She had confided as much to her father on one of the rare times Castle had been away at a book signing since her return to New York.

"_I know you do, Katie-bug, you were the same way when you were three and refused to let your mother put a night light in your room, even though you were deathly afraid of the dark. You crawled into bed with us more than once during that summer, especially when the power went out during that one bad summer storm at your Aunt Teresa's farm upstate. It was okay for you to seek us out when you needed comfort then, and it's okay for you to seek out Rick for it now." _

She kept trying to do it alone though from time to time, her own self esteem and fiercely independent streak demanded it. She was a grown woman, not a child and she needed to know that she could at least sleep through the night by herself.

Before she could start anything deeper with Castle, she had to feel like herself, feel like a whole person again. That she was with him because she wanted to let him all the way in, not just to have a warm body in her bed occasionally, like she had with Tom and Josh and if she was honest with herself, Sorenson too. Even when she was with them, she knew she had wanted more than the occasional sex that those men were all-to-happy to offer.

She hadn't lied when she'd told Castle that she wanted someone who would be there for her, and she could be there for him, and they could just dive into it together. Over the last few months, she had finally come to the realization that the person she'd been describing was indeed Richard Castle. She still wanted that with him, even though almost everything she thought she'd known about him up to this point had been a lie, a cover story fabricated by his government handlers.

Seeing him with his daughter, and knowing everything that he'd walked away from to be a father for her showed Kate that there was more to him than the cover he had been living under for nearly sixteen years. There was certainly more to Castle than the accident that had changed his life forever and what had been done to him after. She could spend the rest of her life trying to make him see that and it would not be a wasted life. All she had to do was the the one thing she had never managed to do with anyone else, even before her mother's murder. All she had to do was let him in.

Kate blinked her eyes a few times and realized she had spent several minutes staring longingly at Castle's empty chair. Long enough for anyone who was looking at her to notice, when she focused past it, she realized Ryan and Esposito were watching her.

"Where _is_ writer boy, anyway?" Esposito asked, the reproach in his tone clear for anyone to hear, "I know he hates paperwork, but it's your first day back and you'd think for once he'd at least stick around."

From the look passing between him and Ryan, she could tell that they were a united front in their irritation with the man. They still hadn't quite let him off the hook for disappearing and making them search half the city in the middle of the night for nothing. In a way she found it endearing that they were so protective of Alexis to still be put out with him on her behalf.

"Book signing downtown, guys," Kate replied testily, feeling defensive of her partner, "I know it's hard for you guys to grasp, but he _does_ actually have a job of his own that requires his personal attention once in a while."

Esposito muttered something under his breath that sounded a lot like "_yeah, signing fangirl's chests" _and the death glare she leveled on them both was enough to send them scurrying back to their desks and their own paperwork.

Gates sent her home shortly after that, citing department policy regarding her recovery and her required session with the department therapist. Kate hoped the department therapist Dr. Carter Burke had better bedside manner than the one who had done her psych eval, or tonight was going to be a very rough night. She really didn't want to drag Castle out of bed after a day dealing with his fans.

The one book signing she had been to all those years ago, the thing she'd noticed at the time that stuck with her was the tired look in his eyes. She'd been among the last of the people in line and he'd looked absolutely wooden by then. _"No wonder he doesn't remember, I doubt he was paying attention to anything by then, and I hardly would have stood out among the other fangirls."_

* * *

**Three Hours Later**

The first session with Burke hadn't been as bad as Kate had feared, but it still brought up a lot of what she had been trying to distance herself from. The man was good, she gave him that. He asked deep, probing questions and refused to let her hide from him or evade answering. He'd said it had been a good first session after that hour was over, though the swirl of emotions she was feeling as she walked out the door belied that statement, at least to her.

Kate was so distracted, she never noticed the woman following her.

* * *

Her orders were simple. Keep tabs on Kate Beckett, monitor her movements and make sure the writer was holding up his end of the deal and keeping her on the straight and narrow. She'd been a surveillance/elimination specialist in the CIA before going into business for herself, selling her skills to the highest bidder. She mostly did corporate espionage, digging for dirt on business rivals of the rich and powerful, but every once in a while she worked with mercenaries to provide intel.

So far, this was a nice, easy surveillance gig, which was good, because she had a pretty big job coming up involving New Amsterdam Bank and Trust. The man on the phone, whom she only knew as _"Trapper John" _was paying big money for her intel on the bank and a little something extra if she joined the assault team, since they were using a bank robbery as a cover for the op. They did not exchange real names, only bank account numbers and she'd been given the name _"Dr Quinn"_ to use in further correspondence.

That this wasn't a straight-up bank robbery appealed to her. She wasn't nearly so hard up for work that she needed to pimp herself out to some robbery crew. The man had a client who wanted something from a specific safe deposit box but she didn't care as long as the wire transfer to her account in the Cayman Islands cleared. She might even get to wave a gun around if she played her cards right. This guy had his shit together which was a refreshing change from some of her clients.

Her assignment today was clear-cut. Watch Kate Beckett and get to know her habits. Where she went when she was out of her apartment in Tribeca and for how long so another asset could get in and check that she was not investigating some murder off the books that her very powerful client obviously wanted kept buried. She was not to engage her for any reason, and if made she was to exit stage right as quickly as possible, then hand off to her replacement as soon as things settled down to a routine. Her part in this would be over long before she was needed for the bank job.

She had, of course heard about the three hitters the client had sent after her. The two failed assassination attempts before some deal was struck not to kill her, as well as the botched arranged accident after that. The sniper from the first had exfiltrated cleanly, not knowing he had failed until it was too late for him to reacquire the target. The other two had simply... disappeared without a trace shortly after engaging her.

She'd known Jenkins professionally and had provided the intel on the Beckett cabin for him for a reduced fee as a professional courtesy. He was funny and almost kind when he wasn't on a contract, and they'd had a lot of non-professional fun together once or twice. Jenkins wasn't the sort to abandon a contract once he'd signed on, however. It was obvious that Beckett had additional security he hadn't been told about and if her occasional lover was still alive, he would have contacted the client to give him hell for withholding valuable intel.

Part of her had wanted to go after Detective Beckett herself and finish the job he'd started, but _"Dr Quinn"_ was a professional and she secured that shit before the feeling could blossom. She killed people _only_ when she was paid to and _only_ whom she was paid to...period, full stop. It was the one rule that she never broke. Too many of her colleagues had made the mistake of letting it get personal and it had been the end of them, Rathborne for example. Emotion was the enemy in her profession.

So she would do the job she was being paid for, with the knowledge that somebody like Beckett would eventually step out of line and get what was coming to her in the end, it was in her nature. When it happened she would hoist a pint of the Guinness Jenkins favored and dance on Detective Kate Beckett's grave.

* * *

Rick Castle had been sitting in his chair at the book signing for _Heat Rises_ for what seems like hours. It was a good thing he was still right handed and he could let his bionic hand do all the work signing book after book for his well-meaning, though blissfully unaware fans. He had only been asked a few times to sign a woman's bosom but he had politely refused, though he did give them a short note inside their books instead of just signing the book jacket to prevent any hurt feelings. He didn't have the heart to do that anymore, it seemed silly now that Kate had all but staked her claim on him.

Rick wasn't sure if Kate had even read it yet, and he really wanted her opinion of his latest work. Nearly all of it had been written during his month-long exile, though he had rewritten some of it after they had reconnected. Until he knew what Kate thought of it, the same old questions and his practiced responses just don't hold the same thrill anymore.

"Well, that makes you my favorite fan." He said, making the woman giggle before she left.

"Okay, thanks." the next one said, and he thanked her for coming before moving to the next.

Another woman takes her place and hands her book. He's polite and smiles, but when he looks down at the thousandth cover of his latest book, his face drops. It's a constant reminder of what Kate went through, and what he should have done, his guilt over her shooting is far from abated. He hides it well, and most just take it as him being tired.

"I can't believe I'm meeting you right now." she gushes, "You're my favorite author."

"Thank you for coming out." He hands the book back and smiles, but it's not genuine. The woman giggles and walks away.

"How are you?" he says to the next.

It goes on and on, just like it has all morning since he dropped Kate off at the precinct before coming here. He signs book after book, but his heart isn't in it. He wants to be sitting in his chair next to Kate's desk, even though he hates paperwork, taking the ribbing he knows he has coming from the rest of the team.

The questions are all the same and they seem to repeat over and over making him wonder why he had never noticed this repetition before. "And your name is?" "How are you?" "Hi there." "Who should I make it out to?" "Thanks for coming."

It has all run together by the time he says for the almost hundredth time today. "Who should I make it out to?"

"Kate."

He looked up at the sound of Kate Beckett's voice. She sounded hopeful, but that was belied by the haunted, hollowed-out look in her eyes. _"She must have had her first session with the new therapist today." _he thought to himself.

"You can make it out to Kate."

He couldn't believe she came, that she was standing right here in front of him, with her own copy of _Heat Rises_ held out to him expectantly. She could have gotten a private signing for the asking if she'd wanted, she didn't have to come, but here she was. It took him a moment of staring at her face before he finally remembered where he was and what he was supposed to be doing as he took the book from her hands.

He smiled at her genuinely as he signed the cover with a flourish he had lacked for most of the afternoon then opened it and wrote a message to her inside, something he wanted to say, but knew he couldn't in this public space as he didn't want to put her on the spot.

* * *

_Kate,_

_I can see the haunted look in your eyes. This will be over in about an hour and I'll be leaving out the back door to avoid the crowd shortly afterward. If you want to talk, or just a distraction, or whatever you need. _

_Always, _

_Rick._

Kate was hustled out before she could read what he had written in her book, but Rick had returned to signing books with a relish he hadn't had before she appeared to him at the front of the line, so Paula didn't comment. She had recognized Kate Beckett as soon as she walked into the bookstore even without the power heels the detective usually wore, though most of the fans in line hadn't and as much as it irritated her that Ricky still hadn't gotten her out of his system yet, as long as it got his head back into the game and pressing the flesh she could live with it.

* * *

**About an hour later**

"Thank you very much." Rick said to one bookstore employee, signing each of their own books for them,

"Thank you very much for the hard work."

"Next time I write a book I'll be sure to come by. Thanks very much."

When Kate had read what Rick had written in her book she'd nearly started crying right there in the front entryway of the bookstore. _"That sweet adorable man, he doesn't miss a thing." _she thought to herself. She did need to see him, she hadn't known that when she'd started walking but she did.

She'd stayed up most of the previous night reading _Heat Rises_ and it had touched her deeply. From the dedication to Captain Montgomery in the beginning, the whole book kept her riveted from cover to cover. Rick's sense of dislocation and guilt practically dripped off of every page, especially the ending, when Rook had thrown himself between Nikki and the bullet with her name on it, It was everything he must have been feeling all summer, but could not articulate aloud captured in the printed word for the world to see. She was the one who had been shot, but Rick, it would seem had been almost as wounded.

She hadn't meant to let him think she hadn't read it that morning, she had been quiet and withdrawn, and more than a little cranky even after her morning coffee. His hovering had been driving her crazy, she'd snapped at him and he'd backed off, knowing he hadn't been due at his book signing for a couple hours. Two hours she could have had him with her sitting in his chair, distracting her from her impending appointment instead of on the other side of Manhattan, and she felt awful about it. The session with Burke hadn't helped.

She took his arm and they walked a short distance to a small playground where they soon found themselves sitting in the swings, an awkward silence settled between them.

"I like the dedication." Kate said, finally breaking the silence.

She held up the book he had signed for her to emphasize her point. It was small talk, just shy of talking about the weather, but they had to start somewhere.

"It seemed right." He finally replied after a long pause, as if he wasn't sure how to respond. Kate regarded him sadly, as he looked down at his feet, not quite able to look up at her.

"It must have been hard, writing that ending." she said, after a pause of her own.

"Yeah." Rick replied, knowing what she was trying to say, "Yeah. Given the circumstances, yeah."

"Rick, I'm gonna keep saying this until you finally start to believe it, what happened to me was not your fault, it was them, whomever they are. The same ones who killed my mother"

"But, Kate..." Rick began, but Kate stopped him with a hand on his arm,

"Could you have gotten to me faster?" she asked rhetorically, "Possibly, or we could have both been shot, neither of us can say. But what you said to me made me want to live, so you saved me, okay, just like you saved me back at the cabin."

"Kate," Rick finally said when he found his voice, "I know you want to go right after these people, I know how badly you want justice for your mom, okay?"

Kate wasn't sure what to say about what he had just blurted out, it seemed so sudden, so random. It wasn't where she was trying to go.

"We will find them and take them down, okay? Just not today."

Castle organic left hand softly brushed her face, brushing a tear from her face she barely knew had fallen. He hadn't wanted to freak Kate out, but he had seen a woman in the park, he'd seen her behind Kate in the book signing line, she'd gotten her book signed barely spoke a word and left abruptly afterward, almost as soon as Kate had walked out of the building.

He hadn't wanted to spook the woman either. He needed a few seconds which he soon got when her eyes dropped, he looked straight at the woman telescoped his bionic eye focused on her and took an image.

Until he knew who this woman was and whom shew worked for, he would assume that Kate was being watched. If so, he needed her employer to know he was doing what they wanted. Keeping Kate away from this case.

At least until he had what was needed to bury them for good.

"Come on Kate, lets go get some coffee."

_****Addendum** DUN DUN DUN! Foreshadowing of Cops and Robbers...whatever could be on my mind? Guess you'll have to wait and see! :-P **_


	15. Cops & Robbers pt1

**Chapter Fifteen  
Cops &amp; Robbers Pt. 1**

* * *

_I'll take seven lives for one  
And then my only father's son  
As sure as I ever did love him  
I am not afraid_

Dream Theater: "Pull Me Under"

* * *

_Previously_

"_Dr. Quinn's" assignment today was clear-cut. Watch Kate Beckett and get to know her habits. Where she went when she was out of her apartment in Tribeca and for how long so another asset could get in and check that she was not investigating some murder off the books that her very powerful client obviously wanted kept buried. She was not to engage her for any reason, and if made she was to exit stage right as quickly as possible, then hand off to her replacement as soon as things settled down to a routine. _

_Her part in this would be over long before she was needed for the bank job._

* * *

**One Month Later**

Castle was sitting in his customary place in the chair next to Kate's desk, watching her do paperwork in a fashion she found both creepy and comforting in equal measure, both Ryan and Esposito looking at her when they thought she couldn't see them.

Espo knew there was something different about the way "mom and dad" interacted that hadn't been there before the summer. _'Before Castle was suddenly booted from the precinct and Montgomery was shot.' _he mused to himself. Castle seemed more confident in where he stood with Beckett and his place in the precinct than he had been while she had been dating the doctor none of them had liked.

Especially in the face of Captain Gates' obvious dislike for him. Ryan had told him about the Fed who'd turned up and handed Gates her ass for breakfast. He doubted he'd ever be able to badmouth homeland security again.

Something had changed between Castle and Beckett over the summer, definitely since that first case after they turned up back at the precinct like nothing had changed. He could tell from a single glance at Ryan that he saw it too.

Kate rose from her seat to get coffee, Castle moved to follow her when his phone rang. Kate quirked an eyebrow at him and he sheepishly turned his phone to reveal his daughter's likeness on the screen.

"Dad, tell me you need me." Her sullen voice said.

"I always need you Alexis," he said back.

Ryan and Esposito suddenly found themselves fascinated by the light fixtures, their empty desks, anything but Castle talking on the phone to his kid. This was more... private somehow than his interactions with Beckett and they suddenly felt distinctly uncomfortable.

"Dad, why couldn't you have come to the bank with Grams?" Rick could tell she was bored out of her mind, not to mention antsy because she was hoping to Skype with Ashley later.

"You know why, Pumpkin." He replied.

"Because she doesn't want to be tempted to let you co-sign the loan. She wants to do this herself." Alexis responded.

Rick could almost see her making "air quotes" with her fingers, they had gone round and round about this at dinner last night. He'd offered to give his mother the money to open her acting school, or at least to co-sign the loan. He knew her credit was lousy since her last ex-husband had cleaned out her life savings and that she'd had no reliable income since then. The bank would factor this in and would likely turn her down.

His mother needed this loan to move forward, regardless. The money she'd gotten from Chet had been enough to put a down payment on the space she wanted, but not enough to make her first few mortgage payments, or cover the necessary expenses to open her acting school, advertise her venture and stay afloat while she attracted students.

All of which required money.

As much as Castle groused in front of Alexis about her living with them, he loved his mother deeply and wanted her to have her own life and be happy. She needed to stand on her own two feet again and do something productive with her life.

He wanted that for her, even if it meant bankrolling this whole acting school venture himself behind her back. He had people who could help him make it look like a legit bank loan. She would never need to know. He knew she had to try herself first, it was a matter of pride.

She may not have any trouble living rent free under his roof or use his credit card for frivolous purchases - especially when she had Alexis along for the ride to spoil - but she remembered the broken shell he had once been, and she did not want to keep taking from him to achieve her own happiness.

The next words out of Alexis' mouth drew him out of his introspection and turned his blood to ice.

"Dad... I think this bank is about to be robbed."

"_Everybody get down on the floor!" _

"Beckett!" Castle shouted, drawing her out of the break room.

"Bank robbery... Alexis..." was all he was able to get out. Kate snatched the phone from him.

"Alexis, where are you?" Kate said quietly, she was worried, but she knew she would need to give ESU as much intel as she could to get Alexis out of this safely.

"I'm with my grandmother at the New Amsterdam Bank and Trust on Lex." came Alexis' shaky reply.

"Esposito!" Kate barked with her hand over the mouthpiece of Castle's phone, "1030 in progress, New Amsterdam Bank and Trust on Lex. Call dispatch."

"1030?" Ryan interjected, "Since when are we handling bank robbery calls?"

"Alexis and Martha are there." Kate stage whispered, showing more emotion than she intended. There was no further argument.

Esposito's desk phone was in his hand without another word, his expression dark and unreadable. His and Ryan's own imaginations conjuring images of making somebody hurt if they harmed a single red hair on her head.

Kate did her best to keep her voice neutral. "Alexis, talk to me, anything you tell me could be vitally important."

"I'm behind a desk with grams." Alexis whispered, her voice shaky, "I can see everything. They're wearing doctor's scrubs. One of them is emptying the cash drawers. Another one is going for the bank manager. He's taking the manager's key and going to the back of the bank."

Kate heard Esposito state clearly, "Yo, we've got squad cars en route."

"Alexis, I need you to listen very carefully. How many are there?" Kate asked.

"Three that I can see," Alexis whispered, "they're armed with handguns and..."

Alexis came to an abrupt stop in her account. Kate could hear the unmistakable sound of the hammer on a semiautomatic pistol being pulled back right next to the phone.

"Make that four." Alexis stated shakily.

"So, little girl you the hero I'm going to make an example of?" Kate heard a man's voice say clearly. Anger and panic rippled through her at the thought of a gun to Alexis' head. She could only imagine what it was doing to her partner, who seemed rooted to the spot.

"Sorry, Charlie, the little redheaded girl can't talk right now." he stated into the phone.

"I wouldn't worry about her. I'd worry about yourself." Kate stated with all of the authority she could muster. "I've got squad cars on their way."

"You're a cop?" He said, almost incredulously, then obviously to Alexis, "You called a cop?"

"No, I..." Alexis stammered, nearly in a panic, "we were already on the line when you guys came in..." but trailed off.

"Listen to me." Kate said, hoping to divert his attention, "So far nobody has been hurt and nothing has been stolen. So if you just leave the same way that you came in, you can just disappear."

"You gonna promise not to come look for me?" He replied sarcastically.

"I don't look, I _hunt_. And trust me, you don't want that." Kate shot back, her threatening tone clear, "leave now and this'll just be a quirky little article in the metro section."

There was silence on the line for a moment, part of her was hoping he might actually go for it, but then he came back on.

"Sorry sweetheart. I'd rather make the front page." before the line went dead.

"Let's go." Kate stated, handing Castle back his phone as the three detectives leaped to their feet and headed for the elevator, Castle followed right behind, his bionics tingling in time with the spike in his blood pressure.

Richard Castle committed that man's voice to his memory. If anything happened to his daughter he would use every resource at his disposal to make the remainder of that asshole's short life very unpleasant.

Kate was not the only hunter in the room, but he had never been the kind to bring his quarry home alive. A darkness settled over him, with that darkness, a calm descended as well. The same one that always did when he was on a mission.

He was becoming the dangerous creature he had been before Alexis was born.

* * *

**Outside New Amsterdam Bank and Trust**

Captain Peterson was a very busy man. Though he'd been doing this for years, he knew that the run-up to first contact with the bank robbers required a lot of momentum, then a tense wait.

"I need ESU analysis. Sit rep, building blueprints. Five minutes."

The last thing he needed was an outsider disrupting his work flow, there was a lot to do and very little time to be about it. A beautiful woman in high heeled boots was not part of his game plan.

"Who are you?" Peterson asked without preamble. He had no time for social niceties.

"Detective Kate Beckett, homicide."

"I'll be sure to call if someone dies." Peterson replied "Meanwhile, I need you step outside..."

"No, sir. I have somebody in that bank." Kate offered, she needed to be part of this.

"Wait, we got a cop in there?" Peterson's eyes clouded over.

"No, sir," Beckett said back, "My partner's daughter. She and I were on the phone when they took over the bank. She said that there are four suspects in there, all of them dressed in doctor's scrubs."

For the first time, Peterson noticed the man standing behind her, blue eyes boring into him as if assessing whether he was an ally or a threat. His kid was in there, Detective Beckett had said, that could complicate things.

"Anything else you can tell me?" Peterson asked when he found his voice.

"Yeah," Beckett offered, feeling hope that she can help somehow, "I spoke with one of the suspects."

"And what was his demeanor?"

"Calm, actually. Very calm."

"Thanks for the intel." He turned his attention to Castle and offered in a more understanding tone "We'll do everything we can to get your little girl out safe."

"Okay, so what's our next move?" Beckett stated, back to business.

"Well, _your _next move is to leave my command post." Peterson replied, he could see that she was accustomed to being the one giving the orders and shocked at being dismissed so completely.

Kate went silent, the dangerous kind, her eyes flashed with suppressed anger.

"You want to help your partner?" Peterson asked, not waiting for an answer, "Let me do my job."

Captain Peterson had children of his own, he could feel for her partner, he really could, but he had work to do, and he didn't need somebody who was too close to this getting in the way. If it was one of his kids in there, he'd feel the same way, but he would be dismissed for the same reason he was kicking these two out.

They were too close to it.

He turned away, feeling confident that his order was sufficiently clear, but she was not happy about this turn of events and neither was Castle, so she hadn't moved an inch.

"I need a line on that bank. I want to talk to this guy." Peterson ordered, back to business.

"Yes, sir."

Peterson turned back and noted that Kate was still there, processing his order to get out.

"You missed your cue, Detective. Take your partner with you." the command in his tone clear this time, the pointed look he gave her as he waved in the direction of the door made his intent clear. _'Get out or be escorted out'_

* * *

Kate and Rick exited the command center to the sound of the door snapping shut behind them and looked around. Kate looked lost, not knowing what she can do to help get Alexis back, little noticing the change in Rick's demeanor. So deep was her concern for his daughter, that she had not noticed the subtle signs of the wheels turning in his mind, the slight framework of a plan of action beginning to come together.

"Espo, do you still have buddies in ESU?" she asked sharply.

"Of course." Esposito replied.

"Good." Kate replied, relieved to note that somebody still listened to her, "I want to know what they know. Let's get hold of major crimes, find out if there are any other robberies with similar M.O.'s. The more we know about these guys the more leverage we've got with the Captain in there."

Before she could say any more, one of Peterson's men stepped out of the mobile command post.

"Detective Beckett!" He stated without preamble, "Captain Peterson would like a word."

She turned to look up at him, confused. It was clear to her this was not to be a friendly chat.

* * *

"Tell me, Detective, what were you thinking?" by Peterson's tone, it was clear she had done something to offend him.

"I was just trying to help out, sir." she said, unsure what he was talking about.

"What, by charming the bank robber?" He asked sarcastically.

"What?" Kate replied, shocked, as far as she recalled, she hadn't come on to him she'd threatened the man.

"We get your guy on the horn," Peterson stated, angrily, "but before I can get two words out he says, and I quote, _I will only talk to the lady cop. The one with the bedroom voice_" He'd actually used his fingers to make air quotes. She was shocked, unable to fathom why the man would only want to speak to her.

"Yeah." Peterson continued, sounding disgusted, "You wanted in? Well, goddamn it, you're in."

It took a moment for Kate to find her voice again. "No... sir... I don't have any training in hostage negotiations."

"Well I don't have time to give you a seminar," Peterson replied, "so think of it like this. You do the opposite of whatever your homicide training tells you, okay? You don't yell, bully, or threaten him in any, and I mean _any_, way, subtle or otherwise. It's all about keeping him calm."

Kate hesitated, she wanted to help, certainly, but this wasn't what she'd had in mind. If she said something wrong or did something to piss him off, she could get Alexis killed. She knew Rick would never survive that.

"Detective, you up for this?"

Kate swallowed the lump in her throat, the ramifications of this had her scared shitless but the decision's made. This situation could deteriorate swiftly if she did nothing.

"Yeah." she said, taking off her jacket and donning the headset Peterson handed to her "Yeah, absolutely."

"Now it's important to keep him talking." Peterson stated coolly like he was training one of his rookies, "You've gotta build rapport. As long as he's busy talking, he's not busy hurting hostages, okay."

"Mm-hmm."

* * *

Rick stood outside the mobile command center, staring at the edifice of the New Amsterdam Bank and Trust while Kate was inside. She'd texted him about being pressed into service as the voice of the NYPD with the robbers and it made Rick feel a little better about the whole thing. He'd never feel good about Alexis being in danger, but it was better that Kate was here in the middle of it, handling the negotiations.

She might not have been trained for it, but he knew he could trust Kate not to sacrifice Alexis or his mother for the "bigger picture" in a way he just couldn't trust this Captain Peterson. It made what he was sure he might have to do that much easier, because Kate would be safer here, surrounded by heavily armed cops. He would not have to worry about her safety, so he could concentrate on his own mission.

Getting his mother and daughter out of there. By any means necessary.

He almost missed the flashing for a moment, but it came again, a regular pattern of light above one of the bank windows. He narrowed his bionic eye, focused on it and waited only a moment for it to start again.

It was Morse code: _S-D-B 1-2-0 S-D-B 1-2-0 S-D-B 1-2-0 S-D-B 1-2-0_

"That's my girl." Rick whispered to himself.

More than once, since the incident at her violin recital, he'd told Alexis that if she was ever kidnapped or held hostage she should keep her mouth shut and her eyes and ears open, then find a way to get a message out without compromising her safety. She was doing it. He turned and ran back inside to the MCP this was information they needed to have.

* * *

"S-D-B 1-2-0 over and over again." Kate said out loud, they were all brainstorming to find out what the message Alexis sent them was referring to. "What do you think it means?"

"Uh, somebody's initials?" Peterson offered, he wasn't used to having a hostage sending them information from the inside, this robbery was decidedly not normal by his standards. "A code? Same … day… bank…"

Kate scribbled on the pad in her lap, trying to give meaning to the letters while Peterson and Castle talked out various words that might fit.

"Save …" Castle said,

"Same…" Peterson tried, having a civilian in his inner sanctum had him a little rattled.

"Wait," Kate said, motioning for their attention, "save… uh, could be, um… save… safe deposit box! Safe deposit box 120! That's it!" She couldn't help a small smile in Castle's direction as Officer Monfriezentered the information in his computer to find out who that box belongs to. He knew it wasn't much, nor why his daughter chose _that_ information to send, but it was a lead, one he was sure she would sent Ryan and Esposito to look into. Knowing what they were after put them one step closer to having the upper hand. He wasn't sure if it was enough though.

He turned away from Kate with a nod and was out the door. As soon as it closed behind him he had his phone in his hand, dialing a secure number from memory.

"Open channel D"

"Channel D open, negotiating security verification for network"

The calm feminine-sounding voice was followed by a series of quiet, high pitched sounds as the external system host negotiated with the security software in his phone. When it was finished he knew he was fully online. Anyone monitoring cell phone traffic would now hear nothing more than static or meaningless gibberish.

"Code verification A71/TQ9.0.09428E1 authorization code phrase _Archangel Gabriel._" Rick stated clearly

After a moment, his phone's lock screen shifted to black with green letters scrolled across it.

_Security Code: verified  
Voice print: verified.  
Retinal scan: verified  
Identity: Rodgers, Richard A.  
Status: Project Cyborg, inactive reserve  
Clearance: Top Secret level 10 _

_System usage request authorized._

A human voice came back on the phone. "State the nature of your request."

"I need blueprints for the New Amsterdam Bank and Trust" Castle stated, "New York City, Lexington Avenue branch, ground floor and sub basement levels, including service tunnels. ASAP."

"Parsing your request." the voice droned, "Transmission to your device in ten minutes."

He knew the police would likely have most of this information at their disposal, but he couldn't ask them for it. Not without arousing Kate's suspicions that he was up to something, pursuing something a little less than legal. Peterson would deny his request out of hand anyway.

He knew that eventually Peterson may see no other option than to breach. He didn't think less of the man for it, he was trained to handle these things. This was Peterson's show, and Rick understood that in a way that most people in his situation would not.

They would have to go in the front windows and back entrance, guns blazing, with little or no information at their disposal. Their priority was to stop the bank robbers, contain the situation and try to limit casualties. But when it came down to a breach, casualties were unavoidable.

The NYPD had their mission. He had his.

He knew what frequencies they were using and would know with several minutes to spare when a breach would occur. He needed to have an entry point secured and ready by then. _His_ entry point would be someplace ESU could not access. _His_ priority was to make sure that Alexis and his mother were not among those casualties.

He would carry out that mission if he had to kill every one of the robbers with his bare hands.

* * *

****_Author's Note** I bet you guys thought I'd forgotten this fic again, huh? For some reason I got a scene in my head and could not get it out. It isn't here, but I wanted to set the stage first. That accomplished, this one was getting a bit long and I wanted to post something. _**

_**I will try to have the second part out in time for Castle-less Monday.**_


	16. Cops & Robbers pt2

**Chapter Sixteen  
Cops &amp; Robbers Pt.2**

* * *

_Previously_

_Rick knew that eventually Peterson may see no other option than to breach. _

_The NYPD had their mission. He had his._

_He knew what frequencies they were using and would know with several minutes to spare when a breach would occur. He needed to have an entry point secured and ready by then. ___His___ entry point would be someplace ESU could not access. ___His___ priority was to make sure that Alexis and his mother were not among those casualties._

_He would carry out that mission if he had to kill every one of the robbers with his bare hands._

* * *

**Mobile Command Unit  
A short time later**

The phone line from the bank lit up.

Both Kate and Captain Peterson knew that something had to be up. _"Trapper John" _as the leader of the bank robbers had called himself, had never initiated contact. It had always been them up until this point, but this time he was calling. Something must have gone wrong.

In their last conversation, he had asked for a bus, and the time he had called for was slowly ticking away, half an hour left, only the the bus was stuck in traffic and would be closer to an hour away.

She was seriously hoping he wasn't calling to ask about the bus. She was afraid of what he might do when she told him it was running later than advertised.

"Beckett." Kate said into the headset, hoping to convey more calm than she felt at the moment.

"Look Kate," Trapper john said, "one of the hostages had an epileptic fit and passed out. Now normally I wouldn't care, but it's starting to upset the other hostages and I don't want anyone trying to be a hero, so here's the deal. You're going to send in one paramedic to get him, and in exchange for this generosity, you're going to have my bus outside in twenty."

Kate looked at Peterson, who was listening, and he shakes his head.

"That's not enough time." she answered.

"It is for me." Trapper John replied, coolly, "Take this guy now, and get my bus outside in 20, or I start popping hostages."

He hung up without giving Kate time to reply.

"How soon 'til we get that bus?" Kate whispered.

"Thirty-five minutes, no sooner." Officer Monfriez stated.

"We're going to have to ask for more time." Peterson calmly stated the obvious.

"He's not gonna go for it." Kate replied, sullenly.

"Then we're going to storm the bank." Peterson said coldly. He knew what the hostages chances were especially without up to date information.

"We can't storm the bank." Kate said, her voice even but her eyes pleading, "We don't know where anybody is in there. If we go in there now, hostages are gonna get killed."

"Listen, Beckett," Peterson, said, "I know your partner's kid is in there, but if we're going to save any of them, we have no other choice."

He turned away and began to give instructions to the strike team to prepare to breach.

"Maybe we do." Kate said, she was at the end of her rope with only one play left.

Peterson stopped and looked back at her.

"We can use this sick hostage to our advantage." Kate said, sounding more confident by the second, "Instead of sending in a paramedic, we send in a cop with tactical training. That cop gets intel for when ESU goes in to breach the bank."

"I'm guessing you have a cop in mind?" Peterson asked, he had a pretty good idea when she got up and moved for the door.

"Got a paramedic uniform in my size?" Kate asked, already tugging her hair back into a severe bun.

* * *

Kate stepped out of the mobile command center moments later dressed in a paramedic's uniform. Thankfully one of them was close enough to her size that with some careful tucking and belting it fit her right. She needed to look the part, they would not get a second chance at this.

"What's going on, Kate?" Castle asked.

He'd heard over the radios that they were sending in a paramedic to get the unconscious hostage out, but there had been nothing to suggest that a cop was being sent instead.

"The guys in the bank are threatening to start shooting and we need better intel if Peterson's strike team is going to breach. He's trying to get the bus the perp asked for in time, but I don't think it will."

"Why you, Kate?" Castle asked.

"Because I can look the least like a cop of anyone here, and they need an assessment. I won't suggest a breach if anything looks hinky."

"But won't you be recognized?" He asked, he knew she'd been talking to this Trapper John most of the day.

"Just a quick in and out, as long as I don't talk to him he will never know it's me."

Castle looked down. He knew he wouldn't be there if anything went seriously wrong. He knew they wouldn't breach while she was in there, but if they took her they would storm the bank immediately.

"I'll get her back to you, Castle." She began, "I..."

"Don't." Castle said, as harshly as he'd spoken to her in a long time, watching her mouth close to stifle back the promise she was about to make, "Don't promise me unless you can actually do it. Because if you can't, I will never forgive you."

He watched her face fall and her head droop, he lowered his chin to cover her head for a moment, and then whispered, "Just like I could never forgive myself."

He stepped back a moment she she could collect herself. He knew she needed to get her game face on.

"I'll be watching on thermal." he whispered so only she could hear, "If anything goes wrong, I'll be in there before you know it."

"Somebody might see." Kate whispered.

"I don't care." Castle replied, "I won't let anything happen to Alexis or you, not if I can stop it."

"Okay." Kate said, finding her resolve.

She stepped out of his embrace and walked toward the nearest ambulance and its waiting gurney.

* * *

When the bank robber going by the name of Dr. Huxtable opened the door to admit the paramedic, all eyes turned to meet the new arrival. Alexis was kneeling on the floor next to the downed hostage turned onto his left side, her jacket under his head. She recognized Kate almost immediately, but so did one of the robbers.

Dr. Quinn was standing over Alexis, her gun trained on her and the groggy man on the floor. She knew at once that the woman in the paramedic uniform was really the cop that Trapper John had been negotiating with, but she kept her mouth shut. Kate Beckett was part of another contract, one she was still on retainer for. She could not inform Trapper John of this until the detective was gone, however. She could not jeopardize her other operation. Sending a cop instead of a real paramedic was part of the playbook that the cops would use. They had prepared for that. It changed nothing.

Alexis tried not to show her recognition when Kate wheeled the gurney inside, but she was glad to see her. For the briefest instant, the two of them share a look.

"Search her." Trapper John ordered.

Dr. Quinn walked over and forced Kate to spread her arms and legs apart so she could check for weapons. She may not be willing to share her knowledge of Beckett's identity, was under contract not to harm her, but that didn't mean she had to be gentle.

While they're busy, and all eyes are on Kate. Alexis reached up to the bank counter and pulled down a deposit slip, and hid it between her knees.

"I know who you are." Dr. Quinn whispered into her ear as she palmed Kate's chest, searching the places a man would never think to, every place she knew that another woman would hide something from male hands. Making a point to roughly pat her side where the surgical scar was just to make her squirm. Not so much to be thorough, but simply to unnerve the woman she still blamed for her lover's death. She knew Beckett's superiors would not send her in armed. She was here as a surveillance asset, nothing more.

Kate felt almost violated by the thoroughness of the woman's search, but didn't once take her eyes off Alexis, who used the distraction to scribble something onto a deposit slip before folding it into her hand. Not even as the woman's hands gripped her between the legs roughly, eliciting a hiss from her and a tense chuckle from the men present.

"She's clear." Dr Quinn said, her lightly french accented voice all military precision. She couldn't believe that this woman was worth all the trouble her other employers had gone to, but she wasn't paid to ask those sort of questions.

"Make it quick." Trapper John said, indicating the man on the floor next to Alexis with his pistol.

Kate wheeled the gurney over to them and knelt next to Alexis, assuming her paramedic role.

"How's he doing?" Kate whispered.

"Not good." Alexis replied, she looked scared. Kate looked into her eyes and saw that the girl was keeping it together by sheer willpower alone.

"His name is Sal Martino." Alexis whispered, her voice full of both fear and concern, "He has epilepsy. I think his seizure was brought on by stress."

Kate nodded, she had to be careful what she said to Alexis, to keep her voice quiet.

"Hey Sal." Kate whispered, pretending to talk to him, when she was really trying to reassure Alexis, "Hey, buddy. How you doing? Listen to me. I want you to know there are people out there that care about you, so just keep breathing."

She reached over his body for Alexis' hand, gripping her fingers so the frightened teenager knew she was also talking to her.

"I promise you, I'm going to get you out of here."

She spared a look at Alexis, locking eyes with the girl, sharing a moment, but that moment is quickly broken by one of the bank robbers, brandishing his MP-5 in her face.

"Don't talk about it. Be about it."

He glared at Alexis and barked, "And you, help get him on that gurney... Now!" Causing Alexis to jump. Kate felt awful for having to leave her there, scared out of her mind, but she needed to get the intel to Peterson before anything went wrong. Trapper John's imposed time limit was running out.

"Okay Sal, you ready?" Kate asked, knowing he wouldn't answer, the seizure had having left him groggy and lethargic, "We're going to get you up on the count of three, ready? One... two... three."

On three, Alexis helped her stand Sal up and sit him on the gurney, then carefully laid him down to strap him in.

"Easy Sal." Alexis whispered soothingly, smoothing his hair with her fingers, "You're all right."

Though there were still guns trained on them both, Kate passed her hand over Alexis', palming the note she'd written, letting her fingers trail along the girl's hand soothingly before she moved to turn the gurney back toward the door and wheeled him out, leaving Alexis behind, looking lost. Before the door closed completely, Kate turned back, giving her one last long look.

If anything went wrong, Kate knew she would remember this moment for the rest of her life.

* * *

Castle had flipped his bionic eye over to thermal imaging the moment Kate had disappeared into the bank, following her progress. His hands clenched at his sides as he watched her being searched, his desire to break that person's fingers for pawing her over like that.

Watched a person he knew to be his daughter, kneeling over the man Kate had been sent for, saw them interact. For the briefest moment, he recalled Jamie Summers, wishing he had a bionic ear. Wanting nothing more than to hear his daughter's voice.

"She must be scared out of her mind." he thought, before he compartmentalized his thinking.

When he was certain that Kate was heading out of the bank, he turned his attention toward the floor, where he saw what he was looking for, the maintenance stairwell to the sub-basement, his intended infiltration route. He knew once Kate came back, he would only have a few minutes to get below street level. The manhole cover was only ten paces from the MCP.

The real paramedic Kate had borrowed the uniform from (dressed in borrowed strike team coveralls) rushed to take charge of the gurney from Kate, not to mention her belt, tools and stethoscope. Kate walked as quickly as she could to share a hug with Rick.

"She's okay, Castle," Kate whispered... trailing off as she opened the note from Alexis."Oh God."

"What's wrong?" Castle asked, solemnly, and she showed him the note. It bore only one word.

_C-4_

* * *

"Well, C-4 means a breach is out of the question." Peterson said, after quietly swearing to himself, "I'm not going to send my boys into a bomb fight. We're going to have to take these guys out on the bus.

"The bus is still 20 minutes out." Kate reminded him, "His deadline's in 5."

"We have to buy more time." Peterson said as he got on the horn to cancel the breach. With that done, he nodded, and she made the call.

"Where's my bus?" Trapper John said, with none of the sass he'd used in the previous conversations.

"It's on its way." Kaye replied, "It'll be here in 20 minutes."

"A hostage will be dead in two." Trapper John said, "and another for every five minutes it's late after that."

"Please," Kate pleaded into the phone, trying to stay calm, "nobody needs to die, okay? It's coming, it's just stuck in traffic."

"We had rules, Kate." Trapper John said angrily, "I said I wouldn't kill anyone, you said you'd get me a bus. I lived up to my end."

"And I'm going to live up to mine," Kate stammered.

"I warned you about jerking me around. About what the consequences would be. Did I not make myself clear? Is that it?"

"We both need to take a breath here... we can talk about this…"

Without another word, the sound of a single gunshot could be heard over the line.

"That was a warning shot, Kate. The next one won't be!" He stated flatly.

_"Don't you touch her, you son of a bitch!"_ Kate heard Martha shriek, from the other end of the line.

She could hear Alexis screaming and whimpering, the sound of her shoes squeaking on the floor tiles as he was apparently dragging her away from the other hostages. Kate's heart throbbed so wildly she could hear it pounding in her ears.

"I'm going to make pretty red stains out of your girl here, Kate. I've got my gun to her throat and I'm gonna paint a Jackson Pollock on the ceiling with her pretty red head!"

"You need to calm him down," Kate barely heard Peterson mutter through the cloud of her own brewing rage.

"Listen to me, _jackass_. I do _not_ control traffic," Kate stated flatly, showing her anger for the first time since interacting with the man, "you have my word, that bus will be here in 20 minutes."

"Now you got one minute, Kate!" Trapper John said, Alexis could be clearly heard whimpering into the phone.

"No! _ twenty_." Kate shot back defiantly, rising to her feet, her voice dark, her posture absolutely feral, "Do you hear me? _Twenty_. Because if you pull that trigger, I will walk through those doors and _personally_ put a bullet through your skull!"

Not one person looking at Kate Beckett in that moment doubted her word. Peterson actually cringed at the feral, angry mother bear vibe radiating off of her in waves. If looks could kill anybody looking into Kate's eyes would be reduced to a pile of ashes on the floor. The entire command post was silent, the only thing audible was Kate's labored breathing as they waited for the inevitable gunshot. But it never came.

"Okay, Kate, you sultry minx" Trapper John said, his cheerful snark once again returned, "You've convinced me, twenty more minutes."

"Well, that's one way to negotiate." Peterson said, finally letting out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, impressed she got him to agree to more time.

When Kate stepped out of the mobile command center to catch a breather, Castle was gone.

* * *

Castle knew as he yanked up the manhole cover and dropped into the sewer access that he didn't have long to get into position. They may have had to scrap the idea of a breach, but he knew Peterson's backup plan of ambushing them at the bus was little more than a pipe dream. They had another exit strategy, he was sure of it.

These guys were Mercs, everything about their operation screamed military precision. Whatever their play was, it would be kicking off in less than twenty minutes. Between releasing Sal Martino, and dragging out the negotiation with Kate, they had been playing for time to get it set up.

The bus was a ruse to buy time, why else would they give in to Kate's plea for time so easily, without asking for anything? It had taken everything in him to keep from storming the bank himself when he saw Trapper John force Alexis to her knees with a gun to her head.

He had seriously considered allowing them to escape before that, once he read the building plans and discovered the old subway access tunnel. They had gone out of their way to avoid killing anyone, they were hired guns, working for somebody. But that man had put a gun to his daughter's head. He'd sown the wind, and now he would reap the whirlwind.

Fifteen minutes later an explosion rocked the New Amsterdam Bank and Trust.

Kate had been on the phone with Ryan and Esposito about the lead they were chasing down when it shook the mobile command post. Almost on auto pilot, Kate stumbled out the door to see the entire front of the bank demolished. Kate stood in stunned silence, staring at the smoking ruin of the outer facade of the bank, her mouth opened to scream, but no sound came out.

* * *

"Nooooooooooo!"

When Rick heard the familiar rumble of heavy explosives, he knew he had reached the abandoned subway tunnel too late to save his little girl. The vision in his organic eye went cloudy, just before his bionic one flipped over from night vision to thermal imaging. There would be no quarter.

He saw the first of the bank robbers emerge from the hole in the wall of the sub-basement wearing night vision gear and he sprung into motion, his bionic systems switched over into stealth combat mode. He was on Dr. Quinn before her eyes could adapt to the night vision goggles. The last thing the woman saw was a glowing hand reaching for her face then the flash of searing electricity followed by darkness.

Without a single wasted movement, Castle stepped over the smoking, twitching corpse that had once been Dr. Quinn, and continued into the subway tunnel.

Dr. Huxtable was next. He was, by far the largest of the group, but Castle put him down hard. A fist designed to batter through concrete and bend steel had little trouble pulverizing flesh and shattering bone, the big man was dead before his body hit the floor.

Dr. Howser swung his pistol around, but Rick battered the arm aside with his organic hand, then snapped the radius just below his elbow with a single crushing blow of his bionic one. That same hand closed around the back of his neck, right below his jawline, snapping his spine with a single twist of Rick's wrist. The man dropped heavily straight to the deck like a marionette with its strings cut.

Castle stepped over the dead man and rounded on Trapper John, who had his pistol up, the gun shaking in his hand. Rick snatched the weapon from him with blinding speed and crushed it between his fingers like an empty beer can.

"What the hell are you?" the man shouted, his smug demeanor now gone.

"Your worst nightmare." Castle stated flatly, before lifting the mercenary leader from the ground by his neck, snapping it with a single flex of his wrist before tossing him ten feet away into the far wall with a satisfying crunch.

* * *

Sasquatch had watched this one-sided battle without interfering. He would have stepped in gladly, if Rick got into any serious trouble, but the four enemies were no real match for him. Their only strength had been their hostages, which he knew were upstairs. Now that it was done, he had a greater obligation to his friend.

He moved with much more fluid grace than one would believe for a creature his size and whispered two of the few words he could form with his limited vocal chords. The only two words he knew that would bring his friend out of his battle madness.

"She lives."

Castle turned and regarded Sasquatch for a moment before lowering his guard, when Gillian snapped into phase nearby.

"I will clean him up and take him to the surface, Sasquatch," She said, her tone quiet, almost understanding. "You know what to do here."

Sasquatch nodded, he knew indeed exactly what needed to be done. Rick had protected his pack, now it was his turn to do the same. He went about policing the bodies. This dark, claustrophobic tunnel may not be the forest, but nature could still run its course.

Vermin had to eat, the same as worms.

* * *

**Meanwhile, back in the bank**

The assault team stacked up at the door of the bank, tossed in a flash grenade then entered dynamically after it went off, each officer sweeping efficiently clearing the lobby before they moved forward. Kate swept in right behind them wearing her tactical vest over the paramedic uniform she hadn't had time to change out of. Her service weapon was up as she swept through the desolated lobby.

"ALEXIS! MARTHA!" She shouted at the top of her lungs, the dust and soot choked her but she shouted their names til her voice went hoarse anyway.

"ALEXIS! MARTHA!"

"Detective Beckett!" Came the weak reply from Alexis.

Kate ran in the direction the voice came from. She turned the corner to find all of the hostages sitting on the floor in the safety deposit box room. Alexis offered Kate a wan smile, lifting her bound wrists in a small finger curling wave.

"They're here!" Kate shouted behind her, causing Alexis to startle.

"I told you, kiddo, I told you she wouldn't let us down." Martha whispered in Alexis' ear.

Kate stepped through the doors and shouldered her way into the safety deposit box room as quickly as her long legs could carry her. She dropped to her knees in front of Alexis and took out a knife from her vest. Her eyes were watery and she couldn't keep the radiant smile from her face at the sight of them, alive and well.

"Here we go, Alexis. Ready? Okay." Kate whispered as she cut the ties holding Alexis' wrists together, unable to take her eyes off of them, oblivious to the rest of the hostages. Some frightened part of her brain feared if she looked away they would be gone.

"How are you?" Kate asked, smoothing Alexis' red hair soothingly, her heart choked with emotion.

"She's not the only one here, you know." Martha interrupts, noting that the other officers were beginning to stop and stare as she wiggled her still bound hands hopefully.

"I'm so sorry, Martha." Kate whispered, chastened.

Martha smiled sweetly, the twinkle in her eyes letting Kate know she's not upset in the slightest about her concern for her granddaughter. She'd adopted Kate into their circle long ago.

As the hostages were being set free and guided back out into the shattered lobby, mostly unharmed, but shaken up. The very pregnant teller complaining of contractions, insisting they were just Braxton/Hicks but being assured that EMS would see her on the way out, Peterson entered the bank and made a beeline for Detective Beckett and Mr. Davenport, the bank manager.

"Everybody accounted for?" Peterson asked the man.

"We're all here," Davenport replied, "we're all okay."

"Sir, what happened to the robbers?" Kate asked, firmly back in detective mode.

"Dead," Peterson replied, " blew themselves to kingdom come. Apparently the C-4 was part of the exit strategy. They blasted a hole straight through the wall in the sub-basement and opened the ceiling on an abandoned subway station below. Smart plan if they didn't screw it up. They must have triggered the explosion before they took cover and they killed themselves."

"It's not possible." Kate stammered, "these guys were not dime store bandits. They were trained. They were playing us like a fiddle, they were … they weren't dumb enough to set off an explosion prematurely.

"Really?" Peterson replied, "I've got an assortment of body parts that say they did."

"Come on," Beckett said with a sigh, Peterson was just like a lot of cops, he never looked outside his carefullt crafted box, "Let's get out of here."

* * *

The hostages and tactical team slowly filed out of the bank. Beckett and Martha helping support

The pregnant teller until the EMS paramedics move in to take her. Kate watched with mild amusement as Mr. Davenport pulled Martha aside and gave her his card, gesturing off into the distance. Apparently he was a fan. As they reached the bottom of the stairs. Alexis looked up to see her father standing a few paces in front of her.

"Dad!"

Rick took a single step in her direction but she was faster, taking a running start to launch herself into her father's arms. Martha joined them in their group hug.

Beckett hung back, watching their reunion. Over the shoulders of his mother and daughter Rick shot her a grateful look, mouthing "thank you" to her while hugging his redheads close. Kate smiled softly, but was drawn away by Ryan and Esposito.

* * *

Gillian stood watching the reunion not far away, flanked by Sasquatch. She had been in the bank just out of phase and had seen the exchange between the human designated "Sal Martino" and one designated "Trapper John" in the room with all of the drawers. She was an anthropologist, not a soldier or a policeman, she weighed what she knew would happen should the human designated Sal Martino be allowed to roam free.

She had lost two children at childbirth. They had been torn from her by circumstance when she was very young and it still ate at her. It was why she had agreed to come on this mission three hundred fifty of this planet's solar rotations ago.

She had made her decision. She would not allow this human to do that to a mother by force.

"Come, Sasquatch, we are needed elsewhere."

* * *

Ron Brandt approached the house that his apparently not dead former wife resided at with their son.

He had gone to a lot of trouble to track down his mother in law, kill her and get her safety deposit key. This operation had been moths in the planning with only two goals. Take back his son and make Tanya suffer for the rest of her natural life. He would have her watched, make sure she lacked for nothing financially, just to have the pleasure of watching her knowing she would never see Conner again.

Not that he wouldn't slap her around a little first.

The door was ajar. He was sure that the Mercs he'd hired had kept the cops busy for at least an hour to give him a head start.

He pushed the door open, leading with his weapon, the house seemed deserted. That was until a woman appeared ten paces in front of him.

"The one you seek is not here." Gillian said with quiet authority. Sasquatch had slipped them both out of the house moments ago. He had charmed the little boy on the spot. This was her show.

"Somebody should teach you not to stick your nose where it doesn't belong, bitch." Brandt said, Bringing the gun up. "Where's my son?"

Only Gillian was not there, she was behind him.

"And your mother should have taught you better manners." Gillian said reproachfully.

When Brandt brought his gun back around, she was again gone.

"Hold still, bitch!" he shouted.

She snapped back into phase at a ninety degree angle from where she had been before.

"Do you not know the difference between a woman and a dog, human? I recommend that you have your corneas examined by a medical professional."

Brandt swung around again, only to have his gun hand swallowed in the giant maw that was Sasquatch's fist. He wrenched the gun free from Brandt's grip with ridiculous ease, crushed it with a single squeeze, then dropped it at the man's feet, while letting loose a bellowing roar, that sent the man cowering in a corner.

Gillian popped back into phase standing next to Sasquatch.

"Will you remain docile until the proper law enforcement agency arrives, or will it become necessary for me to command Sasquatch to remove your arms?" She asked, her arms folded as if scolding a recalcitrant child. Sasquatch growled menacingly from behind Gillian's shoulder, playing his part quite well. In the end the point was moot, as Ronald Brandt. a.k.a. Sal Martino had fainted dead away.

Both Gillian and Sasquatch phased out and faded from sight when they saw the police lights approaching. Neither Conner nor Tanya Brandt would remember them later. Ronald Brandt, however, would be having nightmares about them for the rest of his natural life.

Gillian thought the outcome held a certain amount of poetic justice.

* * *

****_Author's note** bet you didn't see that part coming? Eh?_**


	17. Finding Equilibrium

**Chapter Seventeen  
Finding Equilibrium**

* * *

_All the little pieces falling, shatter._  
_Shards of me,_  
_Too sharp to put back together._  
_Too small to matter,_  
_But big enough to cut me_  
_into so many little pieces._  
_If I try to touch her,_  
_I bleed, I bleed, and I breathe,_  
_I breathe no more._

Evanescence "Breathe No More"

* * *

_Previously_

_As they reached the bottom of the stairs. Alexis looked up to see her father standing a few paces in front of her._

_"Dad!"_

_Rick took a single step in her direction but she was faster, taking a running start to launch herself into her father's arms. Martha joined them in their group hug._

_Beckett hung back, watching their reunion. Over the shoulders of his mother and daughter Rick shot her a grateful look, mouthing "thank you" to her while hugging his redheads close. Kate smiled softly, but was drawn away by Ryan and Esposito._

* * *

**A few weeks later**

_"Get your pitch to zero."_

_"Pitch is out! I can't hold altitude!"_

_"Flight Com! I can't hold it! She's breaking up! She's breaking..._

_"Oh, Richard..."_

Richard Castle snapped awake, his heartbeat erratic, his bionic limbs sending feedback tingling through his nervous system. The usual nightmare had been worse this time than the other times he'd had it in the past. It wasn't just the accident this time. He almost never dreamed about the hospital after the accident. His mother told him he'd awakened from time to time, she even had brief conversations with him before the morphine drip dragged him back under.

But this time, just before he was slammed back into consciousness, he was left with the image of Kate standing over his hospital bed instead of his mother, that same look of abject horror on her face she'd had when she'd seen the photo of what was left of his broken body after the crash.

Before he could process the image that chased him from his nightmares, a scream shattered the silence of the loft, coming from the guest room upstairs. He was never more grateful that Martha had taken Alexis on a college visitation to Oxford.

It was Kate.

Without conscious thought, he was out of bed, body and mind on full alert. He cleared the stairs within twenty seconds, nearly tearing the guest room door off its hinges in his haste to get inside.

Kate was sitting up on the bed, blankets askew, her arms banded around her knees, rocking back and forth, with the bandage on her right wrist on prominent display. He could hear Kate whispering to herself, _the deep breathing exercises her therapist had taught her_ if he recalled correctly from reading her lips.

* * *

He had found her much like this nearly a week ago.

He'd gone to her place after she had disappeared from the precinct halfway into the Lee Travis case. He'd been about to knock on her door quietly, fully aware that she had been showing the signs of a PTSD episode, when he heard her cry out, followed by a crash and the sound of breaking glass.

He'd gone into combat mode and shouldered into her apartment's heavy steel door. Any normal person would have bounced off, likely with a bruise or a broken arm for their trouble, (Kate had chosen her new apartment well after her last one had been blown up by Scott Dunn) but his spine, ribcage and bionic limbs had been structurally reinforced specifically with this purpose in mind.

He'd hit it much harder than necessary to break the locks and punched the whole thing in, sending the door, door-jamb, and the entire door frame crashing into the far wall with a wrench of broken drywall, wood and screaming metal.

He could smell the stale odor of bourbon as soon as he stepped inside.

All the curtains were closed, and he'd found her cowering in the far corner of her living room, surrounded by broken glass, her weapon held in a death-grip in both hands, blood trickling down her right forearm. Her eyes had been glassy and fully dilated, seeing nothing but whatever waking nightmare was playing out in her panic-stricken mind.

Castle recalled having very carefully slipped the weapon out of her hand while whispering in her ear that he was there, she was safe, and reminding her to breathe while he tended to the cut on her wrist, then called one of his contacts to fix the door -this wasn't something to leave with just anybody, especially not her building's super- He helped her pack a bag while he waited with her until they showed, then brought her to the loft. He'd left specific instructions, informing the crew to reinforce the door frame and the wall stanchions and add extra security features. If anyone else forced the door or picked the lock, he would know immediately.

* * *

Rick was thankful he'd put Martha and Alexis on a plane to England after Alexis figured out the thing with the paper dolls, though - and not just to keep them safe- Kate was an extremely private person and she would've hated for anyone else, especially Alexis, to see her this way.

He didn't need a degree in psychology to figure out the reason behind his own nightmares either. The sniper case had taken a lot out of him, almost as much as it had taken out of Kate. (he had his own unresolved issues with Kate's shooting) Watching Kate be forced to deal with her own personal boogeyman head-on with each new victim had been heartbreaking. There had been nothing he could do to take the pain away from her while she wallowed in her own private hell and it still ate him alive. Even now he was sorely tempted to ask Gillian to do something to take it away, but was certain she would refuse.

* * *

It had been Esposito who'd gotten through to her in the end. Rick didn't know what the Latino detective had done, or said to Kate before she walked out of the evidence room with the rifle that shot her slung over one shoulder, but whatever he'd done had helped. She had been shaken, but for a little while, as long as she kept her mind focused on the case, she was Detective Beckett again.

When Travis had taken her hostage it had been Esposito who'd saved her, while he'd been unable to do anything. He didn't know where she was, and he was held back by the officers at the police cordon from using his enhanced right eye to do a search. He could have brushed past them with ease to gain entrance to the building, but would most likely have gotten her killed by blustering from room to room, even _with_ his enhanced strength and speed. It brought back all of the same feelings of guilt and helplessness he'd felt after her shooting.

* * *

At least this time Kate hadn't run, he'd been able to convince her to come home with him and stay in the guest room after giving her statement instead of going to her father's so he could keep an eye on her. She'd promised to stay at least until the repairs to her apartment door were finished in about a week, though he hoped she'd agree to stay longer.

She'd almost been killed again - right in front of him - and this time he wasn't ready to let her go so easily.

He could be here for her, hold her when she woke screaming from her nightmares and keep her from self medicating so she wouldn't end up an alcoholic like her father had. He knew she didn't want that. It was why she'd been so adamant about getting off the pain meds as soon as possible. Even before her doctor had thought prudent.

Gillian had warned him this might happen.

For now Kate needed him. Kate _let_ herself need him while she was on such shaky emotional ground, trusted him to keep her safe until she could stand on her own and be herself again.

He could do that.

* * *

_****Author's note** Yes, I know this was short, but I wanted to post something on this story and didn't want to rewrite Killshot any more than necessary, as I really liked how that turned out, but I wanted to give it a mention here, now that the show was renewed. **_

_**Killshot was the first episode of Castle that I had ever seen, the one that pulled me into this whole crazy Caskett fandom thing, and the benchmark of excellence that I hold EVERY SINGLE EPISODE of Castle to. I liked where they went with it. **_

_**HAVE I MENTIONED THAT CASTLE HAS BEEN RENEWED FOR SEASON 8? WITH THE FULL CAST INTACT? /end rant. **_


	18. Pandora's Box pt 1

**Chapter Eighteen  
Pandora's Box Pt 1  
**

* * *

_He could be here for her, hold her when she woke screaming from her nightmares and keep her from self medicating so she wouldn't end up an alcoholic like her father had. He knew she didn't want that. It was why she'd been so adamant about getting off the pain meds as soon as possible. Even before her doctor had thought prudent. Gillian had warned him this might happen. _

_For now Kate needed him, she let herself need him while she was on such shaky emotional ground. Kate trusted him to keep her safe until she could stand on her own and be herself again. _

_He could do that._

* * *

It had been several weeks since the Lee Travis case, Beckett had since moved back into her apartment after er front door had been replaced and structurally reinforced. Though Rick had hated to see her leave the loft - he'd fretted and worried about her from the moment her door closed with him on the other side - he knew it had been an important part of her recovery that she be able to return to some semblance of her normal, independent life. She needed to feel comfortable in her own skin again, able to sleep in her own bed and get a handle on her anxiety. Castle knew that from his own experience.

No matter how many people loved her and were in her corner, Rick understood better than most that there were still some inner demons had to be slain alone in order for a person to feel whole. Kate knew that she could count on him and the boys if she needed them, he had been clear about that point when he'd walked her to her door that first night. He had been down the road she was traveling and he knew more than she did that it was an ugly one to travel without some sort of support system.

Kate needed to find herself, find her own center, just like he had once upon a time, or any relationship they began would be built upon sand. If she hadn't told him about returning to her therapist during her stay he would have suggested it himself.

Ever since Kate left, however, Alexis had been acting strangely, barely home from school every day only to trade her school uniform for more practical attire then out the door again with barely a brush of her lips to his cheek and she stayed out much later than was her norm. It worried him when she got this secretive. Only his word to her (a pinky swear at that) after the incident with the GPS tracker on her phone had kept him from calling Gina and having her whereabouts geo-tagged.

Castle trusted his daughter to know her limits, but he was also fully aware of the dark things that lurked in the night, darker imaginings reinforced by spending the last three years shadowing Kate. Once upon a time he had actually _been _one of those dark shadows in the night.

He knew that any harm coming to his little girl would send him spiraling down a dark path. He'd literally torn Trapper John and his band of mercenaries apart with his bare hands only a few weeks ago when he had thought they'd killed her. He still didn't know what Gillian and Sasquatch had done with their bodies to fool Captain Peterson, but he'd killed them all without a second thought. He would do it again to keep her safe and he made no excuses for it.

He took no pleasure in ending them, nor did he feel any particular sorrow for their loss. They may not have taken any lives in their robbery, but they were not innocent by any means. At least one of them - the one referred to as _Dr. Quinn _-had been following Kate, which meant another opportunity had been lost to get intel on who wanted her dead, which was his only real regret in the whole affair. After so many years the woman he loved deserved answers.

* * *

Castle and Beckett had only just rolled into the crime scene, but Kate could tell that something was up with him, she was apprehensive about her role in getting Alexis an internship with Lanie behind his back. She knew how protective he was when it came to his daughter.

He'd practically admitted to her over the summer that the last person to put her in danger had disappeared without a trace, courtesy of his own father. It was a very narrow tightrope she was walking, keeping Alexis' confidence in order to earn back her trust while not costing her the trust Castle had shown her by baring his soul about what he really was.

"Truth is," Castle said, continuing the conversation that had begun in the car, " this new internship isn't necessary the problem. It's the fact she now has three of them going at once.

"Yeah, well you never know, Castle." Kate replied, still a little unsure if this had been a wise decision after all, "This might be the one that brings you two closer together."

"I doubt it." he replied, "Best I can hope for now is she learns to become more of an underachiever."

"With you as her father," Kate replied. "I find that hard to believe."

"Never in a million years," Castle groaned, "did I think I would _ever_ find myself wishing she were just a little bit like her mother."

* * *

As Castle and Beckett get closer to the body, Detective Esposito pulled back the tarp covering their victim from the eyes of curious lookers on.

"So," Esposito reported, "neighbors heard a hellacious fight and then our vic sailed out of that fourth floor window."

"Was that his apartment?" Kate asked, all business,

"We're checking," Esposito replied, "but it doesn't look like it. Tenants don't recognize him and he doesn't have any ID."

"No ID," Lanie added, "but lots of causes of death."

"Other than gravity, you mean?" Castle asked.

"Oh yeah." Lanie replied, shining her penlight on the entrance wound of a small caliber bullet "See that bullet wound?"

"So he was shot before he fell?" Beckett asked.

"And stabbed." Lanie added, "Multiple implements were used, including a pencil jammed into the side of his neck. Choked too."

"Talk about overkill." Castle stated, to which Esposito nodded, but nobody noticed the subtle increase in tension in his voice. Nor did they notice his focus on the body when he zoomed in on the victim's face with his bionic eye sending an image to his phone.

Something about the state of the deceased felt familiar. The random objects used to kill him - meant to show desperation - felt forced to him. It looked... familiar, like something his father would do to muddy the waters. The sudden realization had all of the wrong alarm bells ringing in his head, and his bionics tingling. Only his father or the assets he'd personally trained, applied this much overkill. The body being left to be found was also no coincidence or it would not have become public. He began to feel an overwhelming sense of dread in the pit of his stomach.

"Did anyone see his attacker?" Kate asked, Castle's new focus lost to her immersion in the case, her own focus on speaking for the victim she was kneeling beside.

"We're checking with witnesses," Esposito replied, also all business, "but I figure our perp slipped out of the building during all of the confusion."

"All right, let's go see what they have to say." Kate replied.

* * *

With that Esposito turned to check on the canvas as Rick and Kate move the other way, toward the OCME van, passing by Alexis wearing a Medical Examiner jacket.

"Hey Pumpkin," Castle said on impulse, not immediately taking in her jacket and the security badge around her neck.

"Hey, Dad," Alexis replied casually, still heading for the body that had until recently been standing over. Suddenly the realization that his daughter should not be there, given his instincts about their likely killer. His father would rather chew off his own arm rather than allow Alexis to come to harm, but he could not say the same about one of the men he might have trained.

"Alexis?" he asked, his left arm finding her elbow to keep her from walking away.

"Dad?" She asked in return, confused by his reaction. He usually wasn't this serious with her.

"What are you doing here?" He asked, "is _this_ what you were being so secretive about lately?"

"Dr. Parish agreed to let me shadow her," Alexis replied. "If I go to med school this would give me a better grasp of forensic pathology. I've learned a lot in the last two days alone."

He didn't want to frighten her, but if there was any case he was certain he wanted his daughter nowhere near, it was this one... given his misgivings.

"Sweetheart," Castle breathed, trying not to show the depths of his displeasure."why wouldn't you tell me?"

"I was afraid you'd veto it," Alexis replied. "Like my being here was invading your territory or..."

"This isn't about my territory," Castle explained. "This work can be dangerous, and I don't know if you should be exposed to crime scenes and dead bodies."

"I'm already used to that," Alexis replied, sure her father was overreacting. "It's equal parts gross and cool. I finally get why you're into this, Dad. Now I'm into it, too."

* * *

There were times when Richard Castle really hated that his daughter knew absolutely nothing of his past, that he couldn't tell her why his misgivings were about more than her going behind his back, and apparently forging his signature on the forms where his consent was required for Alexis to work in what amounted to a law enforcement capacity.

Short of reporting Lanie for an ethics violation for accepting Alexis as an intern without parental consent, not to mention his own daughter for forgery he was between a rock and a hard place so he said nothing more, allowing his daughter to move to Lanie's side before crossing roughly under the crime scene tape to rejoin Kate, who was studying the broken window above their dead body.

"I'm really not happy with the way my worlds are colliding," Castle stated darkly.

"You mean Alexis?" Kate asked.

"You knew about this?" Castle asked, and it became abundantly clear to Kate that he was not as pleased as she'd hoped he'd be.

"C'mon, Castle," Kate cajoled. "You're the one that said you wanted to find a way to spend more time with her before she went off to college."

"This was _not_ what I meant," Castle replied, his voice cold as ice. "Something you would have known if you had spoken with _me_ first."

Kate shivered in spite of herself. She hadn't heard that tone in his voice since that summer when they were first working out their differences.

* * *

With his daughter's involvement, this case just became more complicated in ways Castle was certain Kate was unaware of. If his father or one of his proteges had anything to do with this killing, Castle knew that Kate could find herself way out of her depth very quickly and his daughter could end up in the line of fire.

Without being consciously aware of it, his head was on a swivel, his bionic eye flipped over to thermal and all of his senses went on full alert.

"Kate," Castle whispered urgently in Beckett's ear, "get more uniforms down here to secure this scene... _now_."

* * *

It only took a few minutes to have additional units at the scene, but not even that seemed to calm her partner sufficiently until word came back that the body - along with Lanie and Alexis - had arrived safely back at the OCME building downtown. Upon their arrival, along with the the sector watch commander, Kate felt it was time to return to the precinct to prepare the murder board.

Castle was silent in the passenger seat the entire ride to the precinct, his face focused ahead. His expression almost neutral, his eyes never once looking at her. It was clear that he was upset - no make that pissed - at her.

Kate could tell that she had clearly overstepped when it came to helping Alexis get the internship with Lanie and for the first time realized how easily the girl had manipulated her. Kate was beginning to wonder just how well Castle's daughter could forge her father's signature - not to mention her capacity for subterfuge.

He'd often spoken of how easily his daughter could talk him into things and only now did she really believe him, having only recently been on the receiving end of Alexis Castle's pleading baby blues. _Roy Kevin and Javi never stood a chance against her, _Kate mused to herself, thinking back to when the girl had skipped school to worm her way into the Hayley Blue investigation a few years ago.

Kate was also becoming increasingly concerned about Alexis' motives for wanting this internship. Outside of Alexis' father, Dr. Lanie Parish was the only person alive who knew her better than even her therapist. Kate's hopes that Alexis' request for help had been an olive branch after last summer seemed less likely with every new piece of information she processed.

_At best Alexis wants access to one of my oldest friends to determine if she can trust me with her father, _Kate thought to herself, _at worst it's an attempt to thrust a wedge between him and me._

Kate desperately hoped it was the former, because if Alexis ever laid down the gauntlet with an ultimatum, she truly believed she knew what Castle's choice would have to be.

* * *

Once back at the precinct Ryan was hard at work on the audio and video retrieved from the scene and the 911 tapes.

"The first 911 call came at 8:42 PM," Ryan stated, "just after our victim crash landed. So our guy probably made it to the corner a minute or two later."

When Ryan noticed Castle standing a Kate's shoulder he nodded and grinned.

"Hey, pretty cool about Alexis' internship, huh?" Ryan was about to smile when he received a glare that could melt steel, which cut him off mid grin, "Or not."

With the temperature in the room having dropped ten degrees, Ryan turned back to cue the footage he wanted to show them next. The man - clearly their killer - crowding a woman trying to hail a cab.

"There," Kate said, pointing at the screen. "That's gotta be him."

"He's clearly been wounded," Castle observed as the man on the tape pushed the woman into the cab, ahead of him, "the body has gone public, and he's looking for an exit strategy."

"He's got a hostage," Kate noted, "Track the taxi off the medallion number. Find out where it went."

* * *

An hour later, their primary suspect - answering to the name Thomas Gage - was sitting in interrogation room one.

For a man who had violently murdered a man, the take-down had been far to easy. He hadn't even flinched when ESU had broken down the door and for half a second, Kate had thought he might actually go for his gun, or perhaps hers when she moved to cuff him, but something seemed to stop him cold.

Something about this case was not adding up for her. For a man who had gone to a lot of trouble to escape the scene of his crime, it all of a sudden seemed like he wanted to be caught. There were too many variables that didn't fit the facts she had at hand and she didn't like it. Not to mention Castle was acting weird too, like he knew how this was going to play out already.

"Thomas Gage," Kate stated as she pulled the door to the interrogation room closed behind her, "For the record, have I advised you of your rights?"

"Yes," he replied after a brief pause.

"Including your right to an attorney?" Kate asked clearly for the recording.

"I won't need one." Gage responded without even the slightest inflection in his voice, like he was chatting with her about the weather. It was really creeping her out and throwing her off her game.

"Do you recognize this man?" Kate asked, slipping a crime scene photo in front of him, trying to get her equilibrium back.

"Looks like he took a nasty fall." Gage replied, as his eyes flicked down to the photo and back to hers, his expression cold as ice.

"Well, as it turns out he had a little help, Kate informed him. "Fingerprint evidence will show that he was thrown out a window by you. After which, you kidnapped Tina Massey in full view of a security camera. Murder plus kidnapping. That equals more years in prison than you have left. Unless you cooperate."

Gage paused to flick his eyes at the mirror behind her, as if he knew that Castle was there watching the interrogation, before his eyes once again bored into Kate's, unnerving her even further, though she gave no outward sign of it.

"I don't really exist, neither did he." Gage said calmly, "Don't take this the wrong way, Detective, because I have nothing personal against you, but everything that you have, or you think you have against me is all going to go away. We're done here."

Kate sat glaring at the man, completely dumbfounded. She hadn't been so completely stonewalled by a perp in her interrogation room since Vulcan Simmons, and then she was chasing her mother's killer which she knew took her off of her game. This guy didn't toy with her like Simmons did. He just shut her down without so much as twitch. After a moment, she rose and stalked from the room.

* * *

Castle was sitting calmly in the observation room when she'd arrived. He didn't recognize Thomas Gage, but he did recognize the man's methods, clearly influenced by training he'd received from _"Nemesis"._ He'd bowed out of the interrogation, because he knew how it would likely go.

Kate's methods only worked on criminals, people who feared prosecution or her personally. This man was no common criminal. It was clear that he was an operator, more likely a _"fixer" _Kate wasn't going to get him within ten miles of a courtroom. He'd be out by breakfast, sooner if he was still on a mission timetable.

"This guy should be sweating bullets," Kate muttered "This doesn't feel right."

"Kate," Castle began, his eyes full of apology for the first time since he'd found out about his daughter's internship that it nearly stole Kate's breath, "I think you may need to prepare yourself for the likelihood that he's gonna walk."

"What?" Kate rasped, her eyes flashing in indignation, "We have him dead to rights..."

"Kate, I know exactly what he is and it doesn't matter how much you have. He's a company _fixer_, which means he doesn't officially exist. If he let the body go public, there was a damn good reason for it and I can tell you with all certainty, everything you have on him will disappear before the ink dries on your report for the DA."

Kate turned away from Castle, trying to reign in her anger at his words. To her Thomas Gage was a murderer, plain and simple and she was going to get him, with or without Castle's help.

"Ryan, I want you to pull everything you can on Thomas Gage." Kate said as she stalked angrily into the bullpen, her words clipped.

"Problem is, that's not his real name," Ryan replied. "There is no record of Thomas Gage _anywhere _in New York City. His driver's license is bogus and his prints aren't in the system, not just ours, but nationwide. Bottom line is, we have no idea who this man is, if he even exists."

* * *

The interview with Tina Massey had not gone much better. Other than threatening to kill her if she didn't help him, she had little new to add to their investigation, other than the fact that Tina was only alive because Gage didn't feel like killing her. Kate walked out of that interview nearly as angry and confused as she had been after her less than enlightening interrogation of Thomas Gage earlier.

But she still wasn't prepared to believe Castle's assertion that the man was simply going to walk. Not secured in a solitary cell in holding. That sort of Jason Bourne stuff only happened in movies. She was conveniently forgetting that so did prosthetic limbs like the ones Castle had.

* * *

Not long after that, the John Doe from their crime scene was reported missing, along with all of Lanie's notes from her preliminary examination of the body and the SD card from the morgue camera, even the surveillance video had been wiped clean while Alexis had been in the bathroom down the hall. Castle seemed not only unsurprised, but relieved his daughter had been nowhere near the autopsy theater when the cleaning crew arrived, or it would not just be the body that had gone missing.

Cleaners were very thorough.

Gage turned up missing not long after that, along with everything relating to him in the 12th Precinct's files after accessing those on a woman named Tracy McGrath. Likely the only reason he had allowed himself to be taken into custody in the first place.

* * *

This time as they got out of her car at McGrath's home address, Castle seemed more animated that he had been earlier, though he still seemed to be agitated given the movements of his bionic hand and his eyes.

"Her phone's going straight to voicemail." She offered to get his attention.

"What is her connection to all this?" Castle asked, his own mind working possibilities as this seemed more and more of an off the books operation if he needed to get arrested to get access to McGrath's file. "Why is Gage so interested in her?"

"With any luck," Kate offered, "she knows who Gage really is."

Castle realized more than Kate did, how very dangerous Tracy McGrath's life would be if she had that sort of knowledge. As his right fingers ceased their tapping of his thumb and deliberately tapped the center of his palm and the stun setting in his hand began to power up to charge.

He had a bad feeling about this.

When Kate moved to knock on the door, it swung open on its hinges and Castle went on full alert as Kate slid her sidearm free of her holster.

"Tracy McGrath?" Kate called into the open door, "NYPD."

No sooner had they entered the house that they saw a woman's body on the floor with blood pooling in the carpet and Kate dialed the precinct with her phone.

"Espo, we got here too late." Kate reported over the line, "Can you call Lanie and get her to bring CSU down here?"

At his affirmative response, she hung up her cell phone and looked at Castle.

"Looks like she's been here awhile," Castle observed

"Makes sense," Kate replied, "Gage escaped and had a head start on us while we tracked his movements after the fact. Stay here. I'm going to check the rest of the place.

When Kate slipped from the living room to the kitchen, she noted it was deserted, but for a still warm cup of coffee on the counter. By the time she had her weapon clear of it's holster, she felt the barrel of a gun pressed to the side of her head and raised her hands. The man quickly relieved her of her weapon, bound her wrists behind her with her own handcuffs, forced her to her knees and slipped a black bag over her head.

The only sound he made were two clicks over his headset, signaling the tactical team to take down her partner in the other room.

* * *

Castle noted that Kate had been gone far too long without so much as a word and almost missed the movement from the hallway, noting only that the footfalls were not those of Kate's distinctive high heeled boots.

Almost missed them, but not quite. He was ready when the assault team came for him, his bionics shifting from restricted human range to combat mode in the half second before the first of them was on him.

The first man tried to sweep his legs, but found out how futile that gesture that was before Castle swept him aside with his bionic arm, sending him flying across the room into the couch, then over the side, where he lay immobile.

The second was more cautious in his approach, but came on anyway with an elbow smash intended for his solar plexus, which had little more success than the first given Castle's structural reinforcement.

Castle spun around, his bionic arm snapped out, catching the man between the shoulder blades hard enough to send him stumbling forward. Castle grabbed the back of his tactical harness, swung him around into the air and threw him across the room into the remaining two with enough force to send all three sprawling.

They were diligent, Castle had to give them that as they came to their feet and attacked him en-mass, hoping to overwhelm him by sheer force of numbers. Which was tactically unwise, as the size of the room favored him in close quarters. All three jumped on him in an attempt to bring him down, and seemed to sense victory in their grasp as his knees dipped, but his legs sprang straight under the load of six hundred pounds of additional beef and brawn, sending all three tumbling away again. He pressed his bionic hand to the nearest man's chest and discharged fifty thousand volts into him, dropping him senseless to the floor.

The other two came at him from opposite sides hoping again to confuse his defense, and Castle tucked his organic arm in, grasped the one coming at his bionic arm, tased him and sent him crashing into his partner rendering both unconscious.

The whole fight took less than a minute.

He tore the door to the hallway off its hinges in his haste to reach Kate, only to find her on her knees with a black bag over her head and a gun pressed to her temple.

Before he could make an aggressive move, the man lifted the gun from Kate's head both hands up, the other holding a cell phone.

"Major Rodgers," the man stated as calmly as he could. "Stand down this isn't what it looks like!"

"Detective Beckett and I were here to examine a crime scene and we were accosted by you and your men," Castle replied, "what _exactly_ is it supposed to look like?"

The man reached out to him with his cell phone.

"You will want to talk to my team lead, sir." The man stated, dropping the phone into Castle's hand and raising his arm back up.

Castle slipped the phone to his ear.

"You have about ten seconds before I demonstrate the phrase _sanction with extreme prejudice._" he growled into the phone.

"Hello Rick," Sophia Turner said calmly into the line, "nice to see that retirement hasn't dulled your combat skills."

"Sophia?" Castle asked, "what the hell?"

* * *

_****Author's note** There, you see? I promised I would update this after the Ficathon story was done and I did. **_

_**I might have done it sooner if certain people hadn't killed any mood I may have had earlier to write in this universe by spamming ALL of my other story updates pestering me about it. **_

_**Pro tip? Fanfic author's really hate that, so please remember that when you review my other stories. I'd appreciate it greatly. **_

_**Yes there will be a part two to cover the rest of Pandora/Linchpin depending on how my work schedule cooperates. **_


	19. Pandora's Box pt 2

**Chapter Nineteen  
Pandora's Box Part Two**

* * *

_"You have about ten seconds before I demonstrate the phrase '___sanction with extreme prejudice'.___" Castle growled into the phone._

_"Hello Rick," Sophia Turner said calmly into the line, "nice to see that retirement hasn't dulled your combat skills."_

_"Sophia?" Castle asked, "what the hell?"_

* * *

The call had lasted less than a minute before Castle tossed the phone back to the man. Only enough words had been spoken between him and Sophia to confirm her identity, ensure to his satisfaction that the retrieval op was legit and his cooperation would be appreciated before she hung up

The as-yet unnamed younger agent held out a black bag to slip over his head, which Castle declined. It was clear that Sophia's clearance had not been upgraded sufficiently over the years to be read in on his "upgrades" or she would have either altered her tactics, or sent a larger tac team. So Castle knew he had the upper hand in these _"negotiations"_.

"Sir, it's procedure," the man urged, feeling more than a little exposed.

"Son," Castle replied, with more than a little contempt, "I can assure you that if you work for Agent Turner, my security clearance more than exceeds yours, hers too for that matter. Since your mission orders were clearly retrieval, not sanction, I'm well aware your passenger windows are likely blacked out. To be honest, I really thought Sophia was above all this sophomoric cloak and dagger crap."

When the agent didn't back down, Castle produced his own secure phone, his eyes boring into the young man.

"If you prefer," Castle stated, his tone cold as ice, "I could call my handler and let her rip your boss a new asshole for you, I'm sure Agent Turner would _love_ that. Antarctica Station is lovely this time of year, so I'm told."

The young agent - clearly on his first field assignment - weighed his life choices. Though blinded by the black bag, it was clear that Kate was gathering herself to spring into action now that the barrel of a gun was not pressed to her head.

"The way I see it son, with your tactical team down for the count, without my cooperation your options are rather limited here, I'd hate to be forced to rough you up now that I know we play for the same team."

He'd said that last part for Kate's benefit so she'd know to stand down. With the danger was past, for now, he didn't see the need for her to kick the wrong guy's ass even if he had gotten the drop on her and she was embarrassed. If things went well, he would see if a sparring session was in the cards.

Watching Kate kick this young upstart's ass would be welcome entertainment, not to mention a boost for her ego. She'd been beaten down by circumstance once too often lately, and she could use the lift. But if he and Kate were going to apprehend Gage and get him to talk, in the here and now, he was going to need Kate to play nice.

Wisely the young operative recognized his severely weakened bargaining position. Tactical team down, the man who put them down staring him in the face, a lot more capable than his boss had lead him to believe, leaving him feeling like a sacrificial lamb offered up for slaughter.

In the end the young operative nodded his assent before calling for extraction.

* * *

Castle did his best to keep Kate calm as they rode in the back of the blacked out SUV, the fingers of his organic hand stroking hers folded on her lap. He wasn't entirely certain if she were shaking with nerves, or with rage at being taken out of play so easily. _Possibly a little of both, knowing her. _Castle thought to himself.

He knew Kate was the more vulnerable of the two of them in this situation. With his high security clearance - and Gina to intercede on his behalf - Sophia didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of detaining him for long, Kate, however, was in a much more precarious position than she was immediately aware.

Though there was only a finite period of time that Sophia could reasonably detain an NYPD detective incommunicado on US soil without incident, she could hold Kate long enough to clean house, then stonewall her investigation almost indefinitely after her release, making it nearly impossible to either take Gage down for murder, or get to the bottom of what was really going on. Not to mention what Sophia could do to Kate's career if she felt like it.

He was well aware that Kate had done quite a few suspect things during her career in her drive to get justice for her mother's murder before he met her. Montgomery had shielded her as best he could from the consequences of most of them before he was killed, but Gates would certainly not be quite so willing to let Kate slide if some of her past indiscretions were presented to her the wrong way on top of a complaint from a federal agent.

Rick had seen Gina do a hell of a lot worse, just for the hell of it.

Castle knew that he would need to have a few minutes alone with Sophia to discuss the rules of engagement before things escalated. Unlike the situation with Victoria Gates, this conversation would require a much more subtle touch than he knew Gina was capable of. He would hate to have to retaliate against Sophia should she decide to get heavy handed, but he would do it without remorse if she forced the issue. If Sophia thought their past relationship would make him go easy on her if she messed with Kate, she had another thing coming.

"Kate, we've pulled into the building and the engine stopped," He whispered in Kate's ear, "we'll sort this out soon."

When Kate nodded slowly, Castle ran his thumb soothingly over her knuckles one more time before the door opened on his side. He sprang out the door fast enough for the older of the two to reach for a sidearm, but they relaxed when he circled the suburban in time to intercept Agent Corrigan as he reached for her arm. From his his body language it was clear he wasn't going to be gentle in an effort to establish dominance.

A glower from Castle was all it took for the man to back off and let him help her from the back seat. The fact that he wasn't blindfolded and was at her back was the only thing keeping her grounded as it was. The sooner they got her into the elevator and the black bag off her head, the better Castle would feel about it.

He'd be keeping an eye on Corrigan from now on.

* * *

**_**Author's note** Here it is, the next installment as promised. I'm still committed to moving this story forward, though I might skip ahead a bit further into Pandora/Linchpin as a lot of this would not be substantially different from canon and I want to tell my own story._**


End file.
